


Red Sun

by recreational



Series: Of Your Kind [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Survival, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:02:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recreational/pseuds/recreational
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk isn't of any use to Khan - except as a hostage. But stranded on an inhospitable planet time's quickly running out for him. Goes AU during the Battle of Luna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The (three part) series is now finished! Finally!!
> 
> Thanks Walkerbaby for editing C1 and CrackshotKate for the betaing of the first four chapters. Mistakes that can be found there are entirely mine, they happened when I tried to fix the plot because I'm new to this fandom. The rest of the story is in the helpful hands of snogandagrope who readily ventured into space after spending some time in Edwardian England with me before. Remarkable flexibility.  
> Big hugs to all of you, us ESL speakers couldn't do it without you!  
> 

_Please,_ Khan begged himself, _shut it out!_ It was killing him, that noise, the blasts that went on and on, and after what felt like an eternity, his mind simply tuned down the chaos around him. The exploding conduits, the jolts traveling through the ship, threatening to throw him off his feet – they were not reaching him anymore. Silence. Just the control panel in front of him was of significance, and his eyes focused on the new interfaces he had to establish to prevent the system from crashing.

 _Dedicate all mental faculties to this task. Concentrate!_ he ordered himself, but his fingers managed just a fraction of the speed they were capable of. Why try to stay alive? There was no use _…  They are dead,_ flitted through his head. Searing through him, pain elicited by this thought cut down his defenses like a white hot blade.

“Fuck, what ... ?” he heard. _That voice!_ Ripping him out of his trance and by that exposing him to the noise of the detonations again, it forced Khan to look up. Just flashes of energy were flickering through the bridge, but there was still enough light to recognize the figure that had appeared in the middle of the room.

 _Kirk!_ Frozen to the spot for a second, Khan tried to process what he was seeing. On no account could it be _him_ , yet here he was, and instead of going down with his ship, he stood right where the transporter had dematerialized him, gaping like a nitwit and almost collapsing on the floor when another explosion rocked the bridge. Kirk.

“Leave!” Khan commanded, watching in disbelief as the primate managed to jump aside when a wall cover came crashing down.

“You beamed me here!” Kirk shouted.

“Impossible!” Khan tried to stabilize the ship, yet going by the increasing imbalance, the inertial dampers were malfunctioning. So he had to find another way, had to concentrate on the console, despite the fact that Kirk was staggering toward him.

“Shit, what’s going on?” A well-aimed kick silenced Kirk and sent him to his knees. He groaned and held his ribs before he continued his agonizingly slow crawl on the floor.

 _He’d better remain there,_ Khan thought. Evading the conductors that now hung dangerously from the wrecked ceiling, he established some of the basic commands. Weapons? No, but the inertial dampers were working again. Peripherally, he saw Kirk looking up at him, the mere sight bringing Khan right up to breaking point.

 _I’m in control,_ he calmed himself down. At this moment Kirk’s demise wasn’t a priority. _Not yet_.

“Your Vulcan friend chose to betray me. He activated the torpedoes in the cryotubes and now we all go up in a blast of bodies,” Khan stated noncommittally. Holding his gaze, he saw understanding dawn on the primate’s face which usually just radiated dumb self-righteousness.

“He what–?” Kirk sputtered.

 _“Hull damage. Scan running,”_ the computer announced and Khan turned back to the console. He had to focus first, deal with the things he could still influence. Trying to concentrate whilst suppressing the grief threatening to tear him apart, he hammered commands into the interface.

“Computer, set new destination. Target Starfleet Headquarters,” he said and breathed in. Something finally made sense. He himself and the ship would serve one last purpose.

_“Engines compromised. Cannot guarantee destination.”_

“No!” _That_ voice again. “Stop!”

Surprised that Kirk had managed to stagger to his feet at all, Khan was taken aback by the force of the body that slammed into him. He took some backward steps to take the momentum out of the attack and punched Kirk in the jaw to interrupt any forward movement, but Kirk’s hand grabbed his collar, throwing him off balance. They hit the floor simultaneously and Khan scrunched his nose in disgust. The primate was so near now that he could smell him.

“This won’t get you your crew back!” Kirk shouted and Khan took a short moment to take in the enemy clutching him desperately.

 _Worthless,_ shot through Khan’s head. Nothing but an infant … a would-be prodigy, a hotspur. But no matter how naïve his intentions, he and this pathetic world would pay the price for what they had done.

“They’re dead,” Khan said and took a swing. Hopefully this time the blow had broken the wimp’s nose. The angle was awkward though, so he assessed that he only did minimal damage.

“You really believe that?” Kirk panted, nose swelling rapidly. “Think, man! Spock wouldn’t have sacrificed the people in those cryotubes.”

Khan stopped and observed the poor excuse for a human, gasping for breath in the pause he was allowed.

 _“Confirm destination,”_ the computer blared and Khan’s mind was drawn to the multitude of alarms around him before his focus narrowed again. It made sense. In a Starfleet way. If Kirk’s companions had managed to activate the torpedoes, they would also have been able to extract the people in them.

Abruptly, Khan wrenched himself free to get up. There was only one sensible option – strategic retreat. “Computer, set escape maneuver Gamma Pi 5!”

_“Self-diagnosis complete. All systems compromised. Do you want to proceed?”_

“Yes, proceed! Now!” The warning was switched off, but at the same time, an even more unbearable sound pierced his ear.

“What? Shit, you have to beam me back!” Kirk shouted and unsuccessfully tried to get up. He was still clasping his bleeding nose, so the blow had hit its target after all, Khan assumed and directed his attention to the panel again.

“I need a hostage,” he said to the instrument.

“We had an agreement!” Kirk whined. “You said you’d let me return to the Enterprise!”

“Oh, did I? Tell that to your Vulcan.” Khan winced at the contempt he couldn’t suppress in his own voice – what a weakness! It was like listening to someone else speaking.

“You have to …” With considerable difficulty, Kirk heaved himself up and rushed to the console, but Khan’s fist shot out and the blow to the head, perfectly placed this time, sent Kirk to the floor the moment the ship went to warp. Khan waited for satisfied glee to spread in him at the sight of the motionless body, but instead there was just hollowness.

Lying at his feet, a heap of flesh and bones with all his bravado gone, Kirk looked exactly the boyish halfwit he was.

 _Do it!_ Khan ordered himself. _End that miserable life right here!_ A kick at the vulnerable neck and Kirk would be gone. Yet there was no purpose but his own gratification in killing the weakling.

Tearing his eyes away, Khan checked the console. The computer had really set the demanded escape course, sending the ship through space in a complicated pattern. If he wanted to free his crew, he shouldn’t go too far – a space station or a trade outpost in a dubious corner of the universe would be perfect places to sell some of the Vengeance’s technology and find different transport.

Khan attempted to change the course, receiving a string of error messages, and in the end he had to concede that the ship was more severely damaged than he had initially assessed. It was a miracle that life support hadn’t broken down on the bridge.

Stopping the engines entirely would be the only way out. He briefly considered that option, yet such a move would leave him floating in space, unable to get anywhere. And if the engines failed because of the continual high speed? Khan inhaled. It all came down to the same: He would be stranded somewhere and his only leverage in case Starfleet found him was the man on the floor.

He knelt down and felt for a pulse. At least Kirk was alive. His nose didn’t seem to be broken – not that it mattered – but being confined to a small part of the vessel with that ape?

“You’d better not give me a reason to kill you,” Khan growled and stepped back. Carefully he chose the spot furthest from where Kirk was lying, but not before he heard a groan did he look up again. Kirk seemed to be in pain and perhaps being at warp made him slightly queasy too. Most ordinary humans suffered from that.

“Where are we going?” Kirk asked, the question rather directed at himself as he stared at the console and held his head.

“Unclear,” Khan stated.

Kirk turned to the side, wincing. “What does that mean?”

“You might remember the escape maneuver I programmed before it became necessary to render you unconscious?”

“What about it?” 

Khan enjoyed the angry glare that was thrown at him. “The malfunctioning computer assumed complete control of the engines,” he answered. “Now we're being auto-piloted somewhere and the course changes erratically, like a rabbit trying to escape a non-existent predator. It’s either that or I switch the computer off and we don’t have any propulsion at all.”

Kirk crawled to nearest console and pulled himself up. “That’s one hell of a rabbit,” he groaned. “We’re traveling at warp 10.”

Khan compressed his lips. Idiocy didn’t qualify for death – at least not immediately.

“Yeah, I guess you knew that,” Kirk admitted and blinked before he straightened a little. “But while we’re stuck on this ship,” he ground out, “the first thing we should agree on is that you stop hitting me, alright?”

Khan huffed out a laugh. “Impossible. You’re obviously too obnoxious.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Kirk scowled and scanned the bridge in what Khan assumed was an unwitting search for possible covers and escape routes, but his gaze was eventually drawn to the floor.

“What’re we gonna do about … him?” He pointed at Admiral Marcus’ body that still lay in front of the science station, limbs awkwardly entangled, the skull oddly deformed.

“I don’t care where the worms eat his rotting carcass,” Khan sneered.

“But here? He has to have some kind of burial, c’mon,” Kirk said. “If only to avoid the stench.”

Something was lacking in Kirk’s voice, but Khan couldn’t pinpoint it. “Good luck with that,” he replied evenly. “The hull is breached almost everywhere, transporters don’t work anymore.”

“Breached _everywhere_?” Kirk asked. “Does that mean we can’t leave the bridge?”

“Not far,” Khan said. “A hallway, perhaps some maintenance tubes, that’s it.”

“Then let’s take him there.” Not waiting for a reaction, Kirk went over to the body and lifted it up by the shoulders. It had already become stiff and he was barely able to drag it to the door which opened just wide enough to squeeze through.

“A little help here?” he asked and wrestled the body through the large crack of the door. Khan briefly warred with himself. The purpose was clear: they should avoid the contamination of the bridge. He could accept this fact, even though the Starfleet primitive had suggested it. With long strides, he went to the door and forced himself to grab the ankles to lift the legs.

“This way,” Khan said and backed down the hallway. After some steps, he turned around a corner, but his advance was blocked by a door. The hatch to the maintenance tube could still be reached, though. “Wait,” he commanded and let go of the legs to open the small porthole at shoulder height.

In a concerted action, they stuffed the body into the narrow tunnel. Upon the closing of the porthole, Kirk breathed in deeply and, with a frown, continued peeking through the small window. Khan was about to leave when a cough stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Goodbye, Admiral Marcus,” Kirk said through gritted teeth. “You served Starfleet well until you lost your path.”

Khan schooled his face into a stony mask. He wouldn’t lose his composure. Not now. Not while standing next to Kirk.

 _There’s no need to say anything. This is a dead body,_ Khan reminded himself, but he felt the hatred that had brought him through the previous months choke him even though his enemy was finally gone.

“You were the first person I saw after all those years,” he blurted out against his will. Clenching his fists, he reined in his urge to lash out. “With promises you won me over ...  and with threats you assured my continued cooperation. You brought out the worst in me!” he seethed and felt his pulse starting to race. “Things that had been buried for centuries …! But you also made me realize what I prize most and that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my crew.”

Silence permeated the stuffy hallway once more and Kirk turned to go. “In the end you two weren’t so different after all,” he mumbled, flinching simultaneously. Quickly, he raised his hand to avert a possible blow. “I’m just saying, okay?” he added. “No reason to hit me again.”

Khan passed him and walked to the bridge to close the door in Kirk’s face, making it clear that his presence wasn’t appreciated. As expected, Kirk followed him regardless, fortunately staying by the door.

“Stuck, yeah?” Kirk asked and scanned the bridge. “You built this ship, so is there any water? Food?”

“Food synthesizer and another waste disposal unit are in the hallway outside.” But Kirk still didn't leave.

“What about the rest of the crew?” he asked instead.

“There were six more men, and they took all the phasers with them, just in case you plan on searching for them,” Khan informed him. “There is neither a way of entering the ship nor would you find any survivors. The detonations destroyed life support in all sections, your Vulcan made sure of that.” Khan inhaled, unwilling to control the desperation that had been lurking every minute of the day. It was bubbling up with full force again, despite the fact that those men he had lost hadn’t even been his _real_ crew.

“They worked for Marcus.” Kirk’s overconfident tone made Khan’s fists double.

“They were Starfleet!" Khan snapped. "They did their job! But what do _you_ care? You abandon your ship on every possible away mission! You don’t know anything about what it means to be responsible for a crew!”

Kirk just threw him a defiant look, igniting Khan’s fury and sending it on a fiery path through his system. Something had to be done! And something _could_ be done, finally! Khan thought, every muscle tensing up. “You want to reason about loyalties?” he shouted and stormed across the room. “You let yourself be recruited for a man hunt! What has that got to do with your cherished Starfleet regulations?”

“I didn’t kill you, did I?” Kirk said quietly, his voice dying away when Khan towered over him.

“I wonder how many people were necessary to convince you not to,” Khan growled and stared Kirk down. “Not that you would’ve ever got the chance. And now I want you out of my sight.”

 _Defend yourself, just make the slightest move, give me a reason!_ Khan appealed inwardly, but the coward bit his tongue and avoided the inevitable blow. Instead he ducked and made a beeline for the door.

 _Stalling the inevitable,_ Khan thought. _But time will come._


	2. Chapter 2

He leaned his forehead against the window and let his eyes lose focus. The stars were becoming that bright string of light as they flashed by, never ending, but what else was there to do? After repairing most of the damage on the bridge and quickly running out of things he could fix with his makeshift tools, all that was left to do was this.   

_Because they’re out there. Somewhere._

Khan heaved a sigh and straightened. Although he had Starfleet’s most advanced ship, it was taking him further and further away from his crew. Subdued, he went to the console and unlocked it, just to confirm that the computer still wasn’t letting him access navigation. Nothing had changed. He was trapped.

On the bright side, it appeared that the Starfleet primate had learned his lesson. He stayed in the hallway and Khan only saw him when he had to leave the bridge to get some of the protein-carb mix the synthesizer produced. Mostly Kirk lay on the floor and slept, or he sat, leaning against a wall and looking bored.

 _Of course_. Nothing overly exciting could be going on in that brain of his, Khan thought, and once he even ran into Kirk doing some sort of exercise in the corridor. He looked invigorated at that moment - as if he had been able to put everything behind him. Carefree, just like _him_ , it had flashed through Khan’s mind and he had violently suppressed the notion.

He avoided leaving the bridge from then on, even storing water to make his trips to the synthesizer less frequent, but at the same time, the endless days put him in a stupor. As they wore on, he even caught himself wishing that he was frozen again to escape the monotony, or, what was worse, he contemplated checking on Kirk.

 _I don't need company,_ he reminded himself in those moments. Instead, he often dozed off, not afraid of Kirk surprising him because he’d hear him approach. He'd know if someone activated the opening mechanism from the outside. And so he already sat upright when Kirk squeezed himself through the crack of the door before it was even wide enough.

“We’ve ...!” Kirk shouted, still struggling to enter.

“We’ve dropped out of warp,” Khan finished for him. Why hadn’t he realized that before? Like a flash, he was at the console and unlocking it. “The engines are failing. The warp core’s been compromised and the computer has set a new escape route.”

“Where to?” Kirk asked, his voice too near.

“It wants us to hide in the corona of that star.” Before really thinking about it, Khan pointed at the display to show Kirk their destination.

“But our shields –”

“Shields aren’t working,” Khan murmured and by the way Kirk’s mouth hung open, he at least knew what that meant.

“So we’re getting fried?”

“Eventually.” Khan looked at different representations of the current solar system and forced himself to tolerate Kirk sneaking a peek.

“There, that’s a planet!” Kirk shouted. “It’s class L, we can go down there.”

“Of course, _Mr._ Kirk,” Khan mocked. “We switch off computer navigation entirely and steer the ship manually, entering the atmosphere with nothing but thrusters and the calculations we make.”

“So you can’t do something like that? Is that it?”

Briefly Khan was tempted to wipe the impertinence off that face with his fist.

“Oh, I could do it if I was with someone slightly more _capable_.”

Even after the knock-down, the insolence prevailed. “And what the fuck does that mean?” 

“Someone like me. Your skills don’t suffice.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Kirk ranted. "You’d rather fry than try to land this ship with me?”

 _Yes_. It was on the tip of Khan’s tongue but he couldn’t say it. Not when there was still a chance of saving his crew.

“I calculate the course and you operate navigation according to my orders,” Khan muttered with less authority in his voice than he had planned. Quickly, he sat down. “And you can be thankful for the fact that I need you for this,” he sneered. “The moment you stop being useful, you know what I'm going to do.”

Kirk just grunted and squeezed himself next to him, staring at the tiny lights on the display until their position approached the planet’s gravitation.

Khan breathed in. This was how it would end: He’d die together with Kirk of all people, and, if that wasn't enough, be buried in Starfleet’s latest technological pride. What a cosmic joke...

“Delta Alpha 5-3-8. Captain Khan Noonien Singh. Disable computer. Activate manual control.”

_“Computer disabled. All systems on manual.”_

The moment the computer fell silent, everything became a blur. Dozens after dozens of coordinates he sent to navigation, but either the thrusters weren’t functioning properly or the gravitational pull was stronger than the sensors had shown.

Most likely Kirk was ruining everything.

“We have to eject the warp core in case we crash,” he heard Kirk shout and without a second thought Khan interrupted his calculations to type in the correct command. A heavy jolt shook the ship, but he fixed his eyes on the course again only to realize that in the meanwhile, the sensors had ceased to be of any help.

“We’re entering the atmosphere too quickly, damn it,” Kirk exclaimed when it was getting hotter by the second.

“The magnetic field of the planet distorts the sensors. I have to estimate our angle!”

“Woah, that explains a lot,” Kirk snorted. “So we’re getting fried after all.” Yet when Khan was sure the instruments were going to melt, Kirk’s attempts to adapt to the calculations and the clumsy way the ship was reacting surprisingly slowed their descent.

“Where are the landing thrusters in this thing?” Khan couldn’t help laughing at the moron’s hectic attempts at making adjustment, and he shook his head at Kirk’s expectant look, instantly turning it into a picture of gutless despair.

“You mean we’re going down with auxiliary power and maneuvering thrusters?”

“This ship wasn’t constructed to land anywhere without the energy of its warp core,” Khan said. “Enjoy yourself, there’s your planet.”

Petrified, Kirk stared at the rocky desert coming into clear view, and for a fleeting moment, Khan considered acting the same way: Accepting their inevitable end, letting them tumble about the bridge like dice in a shaker. But it wasn’t over. Not yet. 

He activated the belt, guiding it around them both. “Make those final corrections to our course, and then see you in hell.” Khan started typing, directing Kirk to the great plain that became visible at the horizon, and from then on, all they could do was watch the surface approach. Muttering curses under his breath, Kirk stayed composed, it seemed, but all of a sudden, Khan felt a fierce grip around his arm.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

“If anyone’s going to survive this, it’s you. So I’d better stick with you … Shit!” The ship hit the ground and through the infernal noise, Khan instinctively tried to keep his surroundings under surveillance. _Assess!_ A ceiling panel was becoming loose and when it came down, he shielded their heads from it. The floor cracked open but that wouldn’t be a problem and the contacts that stuck out of the console when the display was ripped off were far away enough.  Abruptly, they came to a standstill, inertia almost strangling him, but then everything suddenly fell quiet, the sizzling of conducts the only background sound.

 _I'm alive,_ Khan thought, trying to process his physical integrity amidst the wreckage the crash had made of the bridge. Kirk was still clinging to him and the unfamiliar contact confused Khan even more, making it necessary to gather his wits before he was able to follow a logical course of action again.  

“It is necessary to collect as much as possible from the other sections,” Khan reminded himself and loosened the belt to wrench himself free. Looking slightly embarrassed, Kirk stood up as well and followed him to the door to force it open. They had just squeezed through it when an explosion hit the ship.

“A torpedo,” Khan remarked and his feet instantly carried him back to the bridge to retrieve the canister he had stored there. “Get out!” he shouted in passing Kirk who still stood in the hallway, rooted to the spot.

Was the Starfleet idiot following him? Khan decided to ignore the thought and instead ran through the corridors until he reached an escape pod. _Concentrate_ , he ordered himself as he tried to open the porthole.

Steps. He was coming.

“Fuck, man, I’d have nearly lost you,” Kirk panted and Khan heard him climbing into the porthole behind him. They clambered through the tube while a second explosion shook the ship and steam almost blinded Khan, but with some fumbling, he managed to open the outside door. A look downward convinced him that the angle was acceptable, so he glided down the hull to the ground.

Scanning the surroundings showed an elevation that would provide cover, if necessary, and he started toward it, ignoring the thud and the swearing that indicated Kirk's escape from the ship.

Without turning back once and with the night falling quickly, Khan ran across the plain, the gasps and steps that had first been near becoming almost inaudible. Of course the wimp couldn’t keep up, he was just – a human. However, they had to bring as much distance between themselves and the burning ship as possible now that they were unshielded.

The heat of the fire scorching his shackles, he forced himself to stop and wait until Kirk had reached him. As soon as he heard the heavy breathing next to him, he blindly grabbed for Kirk's shirt to pull him forward.

“What the ...?” Kirk began.

“Shut up and run!”

Dragging Kirk took an unacceptable toll on Khan’s strength and halfway up the little hill, his lungs burned so much that he couldn’t feel the cold air anymore. But the top was already in sight and once he arrived, he dumped Kirk behind a rock and kept on walking, slithering down the sandy slope while explosions tore through the night.

“What was that?” he heard Kirk ask from a distance.

“Torpedoes that weren’t primed properly exploded and caused a chain reaction in the ship.” There was no reason to dwell on this and Khan didn’t even look around when a huge blast thundered through the plain, the fire briefly immersing everything in an almost surreal light before it died down gradually.

“How long do you think it’ll burn for? When will be able to go back? Khan?”

He heard the scrunching of gravel and then the unbearable voice was much louder again. “Wait, damn it!”

Khan gritted his teeth and turned around. Something was illuminating the area before Kirk’s feet and when he came nearer, Khan could identify it.

“Where did you get the medical kit from?”

Kirk turned the tricorder around, but it generated no more light than a candle. “I saw the sign in the hallway. The tricorder in the kit doesn’t work though, too much magnetic interference. And it’s a rather poor excuse for a flashlight as you can see.” He gave Khan a lopsided grin. “What do you have? What’s in that canister?”

“Two liters of water.”

“Yeah.” Kirk rubbed his neck. “That’s a sensible idea, I guess. But we're going back to the ship to see if there’s anything we can salvage, right?”

“We won’t go back.”

“What? Are you crazy? We’re in the middle of nowhere here. We have no food and barely any water, let alone a phaser.”

Khan closed his eyes and tried to center his thoughts. Was it worth the constant nagging and the contradiction he would encounter? Perhaps for a little while – he’d reconsider this decision when the situation changed.

“Kirk,” he ground out, the name passing his lips only with the greatest effort, “despite the fact that we ejected the warp core, there will be heavy radiation, and it might take days for the ship to stop burning and cool down enough for us to enter. Days that we lose on our way.”

“Our _way_?”

“Before the sensors stopped working properly, I spotted what appeared to be a station not a hundred kilometers away from here. We’ll walk there.”

“You mean _you_  walk there! Because I’m gonna stay with the ship!” Kirk turned the tricorder around again and prepared to leave. Two, three steps, and at the fourth Khan had overcome his relief that he had gotten rid of the idiot. It didn’t matter what he personally prefered – there were other options that made more sense.

“Don’t move!” he growled.

“What?”

Khan just focused on the approaching light illuminating his feet. “You either come with me or I kill you on the spot. And you know that I can if I have to.” He raised his head and blinked at the display of the tricorder that was pointed at him, but more out of nonchalance than irritation.

“Are you fucking insane?” Kirk threw up his hands. “Okay, well, there’s no doubt about that, sure. But why do you even want to saddle yourself with me?”

“As a cadaver you’re of no use to me. We still don’t know if there is any kind of food or water.”

“So I’m your … walking emergency ration or what?” Kirk asked in disbelief.

Khan sized him up and felt a corner of his mouth twitch. “You could put it like that, yes,” he said and enjoyed the panic-stricken look. “And if you don’t start moving immediately, I make it an early breakfast.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re pathetic. The planet’s gravitation adds just about a fourth of your body weight.”

The wheezing behind him didn’t abate, though, and Kirk’s voice sounded rather strained when he started to speak. “It’s also fucking hot, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I haven’t. And the sun’s not even out, you shouldn’t start complaining too early.”

“How hot do you think it will become today?” That voice. Why couldn’t Kirk just shut up?

“Going by the fact that at dawn it’s already around thirty degrees Celsius, I expect temperatures to reach about fifty degrees, minimum.”

“What? Fifty? We’ll get baked like eggs on a tin roof. Khan!”

A hand grabbed his arm and Khan withstood the urge to lash out. It would be nothing but a waste of energy. Slowly he turned around to face Kirk, whose skin was already glowing a rather unhealthy pink, tiny beads of sweat glistening along his hairline.

“How can you say that like ... like it doesn’t mean anything?”

Khan shrugged. “It doesn’t, I’m engineered to withstand the elements.”

“Engineered. Yeah, that fits.”

He didn’t care for the frown on Kirk’s face, Khan decided, but the question left his mouth regardless. “Fits what?”

“All this talk about you being better and me being of no use. You know, that shit really freaks you out when you’re human. Not that you would know.”

Khan took a step forward and breathed in. The reek of sweat was not very pronounced yet, but it would eventually become unbearable. Blond stubble merely glossed over the fact that this was a youth with no idea whatsoever of the trials of life and to underline this, the blue eyes blinked nervously. Khan felt his mouth forming the inevitable sneer at the sight in front of him.

“If it means missing out being a simple-minded weakling like you, I gladly forego that experience. And now I suggest you save up your energy and _walk_.”

He turned to go and didn’t look back again, not even when the sun was up completely. The rotation of the planet seemed to be slightly faster than Earth’s, and noon had approached without him consciously realizing it. He had just kept his eyes fixed on the sand and the gravel, on small rocks that loosened under his feet and big ones that obstructed his way. The steps behind him maintained their irregular pattern all the time, a mixture of shuffling and stumbling, but when the planet’s star stood high in the sky, they slowly faded before stopping altogether.

Khan briefly squeezed his eyes shut and then retreated back along the path he had come until he reached the spot where Kirk sat in the shadow of a rock.

“Give me a minute, alright?” he panted before he pulled himself up by the stone. “Okay, let’s go.”

In spite of his initial resolve, Kirk tired again quickly and paused every time they passed a shadow large enough for him. It seemed as if he was meandering, not following the trail anymore and just instinctively steering toward any relief from the sun burning down on them relentlessly.

Khan scanned their surroundings and dragged him towards an overhanging rock nearby.

“We’ll rest here until the heat abates.”

As if he had been offered the coziest of all beds, Kirk sank down on his knees with a groan and loosened the top of his overall to take it off and use as a makeshift blanket to sit on. Khan glanced down and violently suppressed slight worry at the state Kirk was in.

He looked positively parched, his lips chapped, and the moment he leaned against the rock, the sparse chest hair started shining with sweat just like his hairline. His body was using up too much water for inefficient thermoregulation to have any resources left, yet Kirk didn’t ask for the canister and instead stared at the sand.

Of course he would stubbornly refuse to be the one caving in, or maybe he knew that he wouldn’t get anything to drink anyway.

 _I’m going to need the water in due time,_ Khan thought to himself and stopped. Unbidden, Kirk’s words flashed through his mind, accusing him of his lack of humanity, but he dismissed them angrily. It was easy for the nitwit to assume something like that. As if acting on every whim was a trait that decided whether he was human. It was rather an indication for one’s idiocy.

Sitting down with as much distance to Kirk as the shadowy patch allowed, Khan briefly considered taking his constricting top off as well when Kirk suddenly stirred.

“That sun’s a real menace,” he rasped. “No wonder this is class L. Do you think it’s always been that way?”

“The star’s reaching its natural end,” Khan answered, studying Kirk. Why did he insist on talking, ill and weak as he was? Did he want to distract from his physical state because he thought that he would be killed if it became clear how badly he felt? “The color indicates that it will be a red giant in a couple of million years. We’re witnessing the remains of a formerly habitable planet.” Why was he telling Kirk this anyway? “I’m sure they taught you these things at the academy,” he sneered, glossing over his lapse.

Kirk closed his eyes and going by the quick rising and falling of the chest, his problems were becoming more pronounced. So why didn’t he shut up and rest already?

“And the vegetation? Is it the only thing that survived the climate change?” Kirk tore off a seemingly fleshy leaf from one of the plants growing next to him and squeezed it, but it stayed the same. “They don’t store water, that’s for sure.”

“They’ve adapted differently to Earth plants, I suppose,” Khan said and cocked his head. “But your keen interest in exobiology comes as a surprise. I always thought you left the finer aspects of interstellar research to ... let’s say real scientists.”

“You know what, I–” Kirk’s eyes grew wide and hectically, he scrambled to his feet to stumble a few steps behind the next rock. Scrunching up his nose, Khan tried to tune out the retching that followed. It seemed Kirk had mostly wanted to distract himself from his own physical state with his chattering, and the coughing continued for so long that Khan was on the verge of getting up to see to him when he returned at last.

“I feel like shit,” he ground out and plunked down in the sand again. “It’s the atmosphere, right?”

“The symptoms point towards altitude sickness,” Khan remarked offhandedly. “It will pass or you will die.”

Kirk groaned again and lay back against the rock. “With you, there’s barely a day without a chance of me kicking the bucket. And this time you don’t even have to lift a finger.” Exhausted, he closed his eyes and Khan allowed the corners of his mouth a miniscule quirk.

“It comes as no real surprise that you can’t deal with the thin atmosphere,” he returned, suppressing the urge to smirk. “You can only hope that your symptoms will be restricted to the minor ones like nosebleeds and fatigue.”

“Great,” Kirk huffed, but didn’t open his eyes again. “Fatigue? Yeah, I think I concur.”

It was a curious display. Almost by the minute, Khan could see Kirk getting weaker. His eyes sank in and where the skin wasn’t covered with the pink blotches from the exertion of walking, it became almost pale. Once he tried to lift his eyelids but failed, and a little later, his head lolled to the side as if he was losing consciousness.

“Kirk. You should at least stay awake!” Khan ordered, but the whisper that answered him was barely audible.

“I don’t think I can,” Kirk breathed and slouched down. Automatically, Khan caught his head before it hit the ground. Disgusted by the sweaty hair, he briefly considered letting it drop regardless, but then he would have to check that Kirk wasn’t choking in case he was sick again and that was an even less appealing thought.

So he dragged the unconscious man over to him, supporting the upper body by pulling it against his chest. Feeling the weight pressing down on him, Khan tried to process the strangeness of touching someone. His mind yelled that there was something inherently wrong about what he was doing, but he couldn’t bring himself to shove him off his lap again. He looked so helpless …

Furiously, Khan tore his eyes away. Compassion. He could feel the telltale signs of the greatest weakness of all, mellowing his mind and distorting his focus. What counted was his own survival and an unconscious human was of no use.

“Kirk, wake up,” he said loudly, but Kirk just continued breathing shallowly through his mouth, dry lips already splitting open in the middle. For a little while, Khan remained immobile, desperately intent on keeping a firm stance, but more and more, the heavy body appeared to leave an imprint in his lap, the heat scorching through the fabric of the overall in a fashion that shouldn’t be possible. He tried to will the feelings down, but they neither disappeared nor would they let him abandon the human.

“Kirk!” he shouted and now there was at least a reaction, but after blinking weakly, the Kirk immediately lost consciousness again. Khan gazed at the small canister of water. It was clear what he had to do, only that his hands still refused to cooperate. With great effort, he brought himself to grab the container and when he did, he opened it to take some big gulps, which calmed down his protesting logical mind and made it possible to trickle some of the liquid on Kirk’s forehead afterward.

He spread the water with his hand, the glowing skin almost vaporizing it on the spot, and to create the impression of coolness, Khan blew a little on the rest of the moisture. Startled, Kirk opened his eyes and Khan immediately positioned the opening of the canister on his lips.

“Drink that.”

He couldn’t at first, seemingly having forgotten how to swallow, and the water dribbled out of his mouth.

“Stop wasting it!” Khan growled.

Some nudging activated Kirk’s reflexes and in agonizingly tiny mouthfuls, he forced down the liquid, each gulp costing him an immense effort going by the straining muscles of his throat. The moment he stopped struggling, though, Kirk weakly clutched the canister and tried to instinctively drink as quickly as possible.

“Slow down!” Khan commanded. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

He held the water out of Kirk’s reach and, too exhausted to put on a fight, Kirk let his eyes droop, drifting off eventually. He woke up again at irregular intervals and as the hours wore on, he was gradually becoming more stable. In the end he even held the container he was drinking from.

A swallow and a pause, again and again, then a nap – it went on like that for the entire afternoon, lulling Khan into a reverie. Alternately staring at the gravel and the clumsy movements of the other man, Khan only woke from his languor when he felt curious eyes on him.

“That was all our water,” Kirk said hoarsely, fixing him with his gaze from below.

“I know.”

“But what about you?” Eyebrows knitted and Khan got the impression that Kirk was genuinely worried about that fact. But why should he?

“I’m not in such great need and you know how I'll get it back.” Khan had said the words almost automatically, with just a slight inkling of doubt nagging somewhere at the back of his mind, but when the body leaning against him tensed and a distraught frown formed, the full weight of the sentence crashed down on the tranquil atmosphere. Despite his weakness, Kirk heaved himself up to sit and Khan straightened to stand up.

“It’s becoming dusky, we’ll continue walking in a short while.”

A pained sigh escaped Kirk, but he followed Khan regardless when he set out for their destination. Now and then Khan checked on Kirk, briefly studying the hunched posture that clearly showed the weakling’s difficulty not to collapse. He was using all of his strength to keep walking and even when night fell and it became pitch dark, he tried to avoid tripping by illuminating his way with the tricorder. As this had worked when the exploding Vengeance had added some light, the display was much too weak now and Khan didn’t have to wait long for the inevitable outcome.

A shout and some swearing, then total silence pervaded the night. Annoyed, Khan turned around and walked up the hill again, following the increasing sound of labored breathing. Like he had anticipated, Kirk sat on the ground exactly where he had tripped.

“I can’t go on, okay?” he said and shone the tricorder at Khan. “No matter what you say or what you threaten me with, I simply cannot walk any further.”

“I suppose with your physique and especially the lacking eyesight, it doesn’t make sense to continue at this point of the night,” Khan stated and unceremoniously grabbed Kirk by the shoulders to pull him along the gravel.

“Now what’s your ...?” Kirk shouted out when Khan pushed him against a rock only to squeeze himself next to him. “Damn it, there’s enough space in this desert!”

“I can’t risk you fleeing or doing something similarly moronic,” Khan said. “The stone also gives off warmth and you’re in dire need of that because these useless Starfleet overalls won’t prevent hypothermia in your case.”

“So in exchange for being your snack, you’re my radiator?” Despite the exhaustion, there was clear amusement in his voice, and Khan was thankful for the black night because this time, he couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth under control.

Kirk turned to the side and almost immediately his breathing fell into a regular rhythm. It felt odd. All the tension had left the man’s body, trusting not to get killed during the night.

 _What a fool_ , Khan thought. Similar to the events in the previous weeks, Kirk was ready to believe his words although there was reason enough to doubt them. From the beginning on, it had only been Kirk who had listened to him about the Vengeance or believed that there was more going on than Marcus told him.

The Vulcan had known that he should be cautious, but not Kirk. He had merely followed his instincts, leading everyone into a catastrophe - but also nearer to the truth than anyone else.

Khan frowned. Something distinguished this human from the others, but it was impossible to say what exactly. _It’s not important anyway_ , he decided, and turned too, ignoring the intimate spooning that resulted from his move. _No matter how much blind trust Kirk shows, I’ll stay awake regardless_ , he thought to himself. _I have to be vigilant … have to …_

 


	4. Chapter 4

_I’m not worthy, your Highness ... Golden curls on tanned shoulders. The heady smell … Yes, you are, and you’re mine. Nearer. Come nearer. Your taste and your warmth. Need them. Need to breathe you ... but something’s wrong ... you’re wrong, who ...?_

Khan woke with a start and tried to get his bearings. It was dark and cold; his nose was pressed into someone else’s nape. A bewildering smell. _Kirk_.

Appalled by his slipping control, Khan willed down his beginning erection that rubbed against the small of the other man’s back. He couldn’t move away though – he had to keep the already slightly shivering body next to him alive. _Kirk’s body,_ he thought, disgusted.

Furious with himself, Khan tried to suppress the memories that had not once disturbed him since he had left his cryotube. He had always had some purpose in his life since then, had kept a distance. And now, with Kirk’s constant presence and the enforced closeness, everything suddenly felt too real again. If he didn’t stop responding to Kirk, centuries-old memories would return, and they weren’t allowed to, they would distract ...

Khan squeezed his eyes shut. He had vowed to forget the name, but there it was again, compressing his chest like it weighed a ton. Why did Kirk awaken those memories? He didn’t have anything at all in common with him. Jahnav had been perfection. No one could ever compare with him.

Listening to Kirk’s regular inhaling and exhaling for a while, Khan fought the urge to cry out in frustration. How was it even possible to be pressed against another body and yet feel more alone than ever before? 

 _I should have left him with the ship_ , Khan thought. The further they went into the desert, the less the idea of using him as a hostage made sense.

Tentatively the first rays of the sun reached over the horizon and brought their warmth with them. Khan rolled over and sat up, observing Kirk lying curled around the rock as if it offered protection and comfort.

It was strange how a grown man could exude so much helplessness; every time his façade was forced open by sleep or unconsciousness, nothing remained of the arrogant show-off. He looked incredibly lost and innocent instead, just like Jahnav had when ...

Khan blinked and focused on the plain that stretched at the foot of the hill. The two humans weren’t alike in the least. Jahnav had been naively devoted to him, never doubting him for a second. He had taken it at face value that he belonged to Khan, giving his life for him unhesitatingly. Pure madness.

_Everything in those days had been madness._

Out of the corner of his eye, Khan saw movement and the acceleration of Kirk’s breathing told him that he was finally awake.

“Wow,” he groaned and rubbed his neck. “It feels like my head’s been stuck under that rock all night.” He pressed his fingers against his temples and peered at Khan, unable to fully open his eyes. “And there’s already too much light.”

“I take it that you’re still feeling unwell?” Khan asked without interest.

“Yeah, take that.” Kirk rolled over and went on all fours before supporting himself on the rock to stagger to his feet. “But it’s okay.”

Critically, Khan observed him trying to hide his weakness, but he could hear Kirk's stomach rumbling from where he was sitting and the pronounced slowness of movements, carefully avoiding uncoordinated lapses, showed that he still hadn’t fully adapted to the atmosphere. He really shouldn’t walk in such a condition …

Abruptly, Khan stood up and strode ahead, steps big enough that they sent him sliding down the hill occasionally. Yet he needed to get away from Kirk before, for some twisted reason, his mind decided to feel pity again. It had already cost him his water and was slowly starting to affect his sanity as well, but he needed to be alert and merciless to survive. Above all, he shouldn’t succumb to the lure of the memories that had started to burst forth unexpectedly.

Even slower than he had anticipated, they proceeded over the rocky plain, Kirk’s pace reduced to almost a crawl as the sun came up.

“You should’ve just left me where the ship crashed,” he gasped and Khan didn’t hear any further steps so he turned around.

“You’d be dead by now,” he stated. Kirk didn’t look up. Bent over and breathing heavily, he supported his arms on his legs and continued staring at the ground. A picture of misery … and Khan felt anger stirring up for the very thought.

“God, stop pretending you care, alright?” Kirk rasped.

Khan clenched his fists. _It’s easy,_ his mind whispered to him. He’s not _him_.

“Should I? I can do that immediately.”

He really should. More and more memories bore down on him and he already felt flattened to the ground. He couldn’t breathe. He needed room. And quiet.

“What …?” Kirk raised his head, bewilderment on his face.

“Nothing easier than that,” Khan growled.

Kirk’s eyes grew wide and he made an attempt at squaring off when Khan’s body slammed into him, tackling him to the ground. He was weakened, but Khan had to concede that he didn’t surrender instantly, desperately holding off the arm that wanted to constrict his windpipe.

“Khan, please stop!” he choked, the feeble voice so unlike him that it took Khan completely off guard. He reduced his hold before he felt the body under him yielding, its strength fading so suddenly that Khan first thought Kirk had died regardless.

“Kill me then, go on,” Kirk whispered, his face still in the dirt. “But whatever you do, you’re a goner as well. You either die in this desert or they find you and you get court-martialed.”

“You really believe that?” Khan ground out. “Do you think that I would let myself be caught and face one of your courts? The very authorities that took away everything I valued?”

“You’re a mass murderer. That’s how it ends for your kind,” Kirk said and coughed, unable to breathe properly with Khan’s weight on him.

“My kind? I saw my people held hostage by a foreign race that wanted to use my skills for superior weapons engineering," he hissed. "Now tell me, what would you have done?”

“I wouldn’t have spilled the blood of innocent people.”

“Very few are truly innocent, Kirk, and the two of us are definitely not among them. Unlike you, though, I was made to see the bigger picture.”

“But they didn’t take away your ability to decide, damn it! You can still make a choice!”

Choice. How often had he thought he really could act on his free will, only to find out that fate had made up her mind to end it all differently. To snatch those who really mattered away from him. _Each and every one of them._

Overcome by exhaustion, Khan let go of Kirk’s throat and arm. For the first time since he had stranded on this planet, he felt the thirst and the heat. His head swam from the lack of sleep and it was almost unbearably heavy all of a sudden. Unable to hold it up any longer, he rested his forehead on Kirk’s back to keep himself from slumping to the ground.

“Marcus took away my choice when he threatened to switch off the cryotubes’ energy.” He inhaled deeply. “Now imagine your precious Spock and all the others in the hands of a madman.”

Kirk remained silent and Khan felt his heart rate becoming slower until a ragged breath disrupted the regular thumping.

“Who knows if they’re still alive,” Kirk whispered and Khan froze. He had never had any doubt about that. Otherwise his crew would be dead too.

“Your people have always been quite resourceful,” he said with calm conviction and straightened. “I’m positive that they managed to save the Enterprise.” He stood up and Kirk rolled onto his back to prop himself up on his elbows.

“There’s no other option but to go on hoping that, right?”

For a little while, Kirk fixed him with his gaze and seemed to be lost in thought, but what at first felt like quiet understanding became a searching look.

“So you won’t let yourself be apprehended? And me? What does that mean for me?” he asked with a frown Khan couldn’t place, because at that moment, something moved right beside Kirk’s arm. Khan pounced before it could crawl back into the sand.

“Holy ...!” Kirk jumped. “What’s that?”

Khan peered at the wiggling animal that resembled Earth’s insects, a cricket most of all. Without hesitation, he bit off its head and put the rest in his mouth to chew vigorously. The bland taste wasn’t exceptionally off-putting, moreso the barbed legs and the hard shell.

Kirk had watched the scene with increasing disgust. “Good?”

“I’m sure there’s water somewhere, too. You should pray that we find it soon.”

Another of those looks Khan couldn’t decipher, but he chose to ignore it as Kirk recovered quickly and even managed to get up.

“You know I have to ... and, erm ...”

Khan leaned against a rock, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. How ordinary humans could squander so much energy producing waste was beyond him. And that humanity hadn’t got rid of beards, like it had during the augmentation process, was just another thing. Kirk looked positively ridiculous with the bristly stubble adorning his much too youthful face.

Khan scanned the surroundings, waiting. Whatever his urge, Kirk shouldn’t be taking so long and as time passed, Khan’s thoughts started to race. He had overlooked something. Kirk had been … intimidated? Yes, but that wasn’t it. That last look he had seen on Kirk’s face had comprised something else.

Inhaling, Khan pushed himself off the rock. Determination – that was what he had seen. Maybe the strategy to threaten Kirk was too successful and the coward was trying to flee. He was really stupid enough to try something like that. But in case he did, where would he go?

Khan climbed on one of the rocks to have a look around. Kirk wouldn’t cross the sandy part of the plain, there were no hiding places there. The direction of the hills was too risky as well, the weakling wouldn’t be able to climb them quickly enough. That left two possibilities, with one path leading in the opposite direction of the crashed ship. So Khan immediately grabbed the canister and took the other way.

The rocks were a nuisance. Every one of them could serve as a hiding place and he wasted too much time circling them. Time he didn’t have. Nor Kirk. How could the moron try something like that? He didn’t stand a chance alone in the desert, Khan thought furiously, and when he found him at last, cowering in the shadow of a rock and drenched in his sweat, anger flared up uncontrollably.

“Do you really want to die?” Khan shouted and yanked Kirk up by his arm.

“You made it clear that no matter how this ends, I’m dead anyway. Or do you want me to believe that you’d just say goodbye and piss off when there’s no way to use me as a hostage anymore?” Kirk scoffed.

“I'll decide if –”

“No, you fucking won’t!” Kirk yelled and tried to shove him away. “But going by what you said, you understand exactly what I mean! I plan on going down with a fight too if I have to!”

Khan watched in disbelief as Kirk mustered up his remaining energy and attempted to wrench free. He put his entire weight behind the movement, causing Khan to stumble some steps forward into the glaring sun. Here, the unhealthy red of Kirk’s face became even more pronounced, the eyes glazing over.

“I won’t allow it, do you hear me?” Khan shouted and now he had to hold Kirk upright because his legs seemed to buckle. “You’re not going to die on me!”

“What say do you have in–?” Kirk breathed and made another attempt to break away, but Khan clung to him, unbalancing them so much that they landed in the hard shrubs when Kirk collapsed again.

“I said I won’t allow it,” Khan repeated, calming down his racing pulse. Confused by his lack of self-control, he remained where he was, ignoring the twigs poking into his ribs. Everything was wrong. If Kirk wanted to die, he should just let ...

Khan stopped and turned his head. Something else was different. If he wasn’t mistaken, he had sensed a faint draft, and quickly he disentangled himself to stand up. Trampling down the rest of the shrub, he uncovered what he had expected to find: a hole in the ground.

“The tricorder.”

Still somewhat dazed, Kirk let him pry the device out of the medical kit he had fastened on his overall and didn’t resist when he was hoisted up either. First Khan had to drag him through the small tunnel but then the cave became bigger and Kirk was able to stagger alongside him. The relatively cool but stuffy air in the cavern appeared to revitalize Kirk to a degree and when the light of the tricorder was suddenly reflected by the glistening surface of water, there was no holding back; Kirk stormed forward and scooped the liquid up with his hands to slurp it greedily.

“Enjoy the parasites,” Khan remarked.

“Oh, I will,” Kirk sighed and dunked his head into the underground pond only to jump up again with a shout. “Shit, what’s that?”

He wasn’t in mortal danger, that much could be seen, but when Khan got the feeling that Kirk would rip off his entire scalp any moment, he pointed the tricorder at him.

“If you stand still, I’ll check. So. Stand. Still!” Khan commanded the fidgeting man. Parting some strands of the hair, he found the cause Kirk's discomfort: They were small and obviously had very sharp teeth, yet with a little twist, one could virtually unscrew the fishlike animals from the scalp.

“Ouch,” Kirk yelped. “What the hell is that?”

“Most likely fish. Maybe amphibians.” Khan didn’t bother with the head this time and the taste resembled the insect sans the crunchy parts. He tore off the rest of the small predators and handed Kirk half of them.

“You’re useful for something after all,” Khan said and the smirk had manifested on his face quicker than he could suppress it.

Kirk sat down on the rocky ground, chewing his food with quiet revulsion. “That made me even hungrier. Really, I could eat a horse.”

“We won’t walk any further tomorrow and instead catch as many fish and insects as possible,” Khan said before kneeling down to fill the canister with water.

“Yay, bug breakfast,” Kirk huffed.

“They will nourish us to a degree. And we’ve got water.”

“All of that saved my hide, is that what you want to say?”

Khan let the question linger in the air. There was no way that he would let go of one of his trumps.

“Can we agree on something?” Kirk asked after a while.

“I doubt it.”

“Really, Khan, I meant what I said. I can’t take it anymore. You either stop this talk about offing me or you do it right now. I don’t know if this is Augment style, but in this century it’s rather bad form.” Khan saw himself confronted with one of those wide grins he had seen on Kirk's face when addressing his crew. “Okay?”

“I think I can promise you that. It doesn’t mean that I won’t kill you though.”

“Yeah, sure.” Kirk rolled his eyes. “So do I have to cuddle with you again tonight?” He sighed exaggeratedly.

“The temperature’s stable down here, so arm’s length will do,” Khan said and allowed himself another small grin. He had crossed that line anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, snogandagrope, for preventing the story to inadvertently become a Hobbit crossover :)


	5. Chapter 5

He woke up in complete darkness. Though his superior eyes saw only the faintest of shadows, he knew instantly that someone was looking at him.

“What?”

“Do you think it’s already dawn?” Kirk asked, before he switched on the tricorder and illuminated the cave. “You said we’d go catch something to eat. And if it was already dawn, you know, maybe we could start.”

He didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was ravenous. Impatiently, he waited for Khan’s reaction, who just heaved a sigh and sat up with pronounced slowness.

“So we’re ready to go?” Kirk asked eagerly.

“No, not yet.” Kirk’s hopeful face fell again at that sentence and Khan got up to walk toward the pond. He rolled up his sleeve and knelt down to reach into the water with his arm, stirring it carefully.

“Are you crazy?” Kirk cowered next to him, staring at the arm that parted the glistening surface. “They’re going to eat you alive!”

First there was nothing, but then the animals struck in a concerted action, a multitude of bites at the same time. Ignoring the pain, Khan continued moving his arm for a while before he whipped it out again. He sat on his heels, ripping off the fish thrashing on him.

“If you helped me, it would be less uncomfortable.”

At first Kirk only gaped unbelievingly, then he spurred into action, peeling off the creatures and adding them to the twitching heap. Soon the last of the sharp teeth were extracted from the skin and Khan breathed a silent thanks.

“Damn, that must hurt like hell.” Kirk reached for the tricorder and pointed it at the arm just in time to see the last of the small flesh wounds closing. “How do you do that?”

Kirk put the tricorder on the ground and snatched at the arm, the urge to flinch at the contact challenging Khan’s entire self-control. Experimentally Kirk poked into the healed skin, testing its strength. “Guess it comes with the ‘being better’ package, doesn’t it?”

Mesmerized, Khan observed the hand moving along his forearm in every direction, following an invisible, erratic trail. Short hair stood slightly on end and before Khan could process the fact that his skin contracted to form goosebumps, Kirk let go of him.

“That’s a neat thing, I’m gonna give you that.” The smile vanished quickly as Kirk started to stuff half of the pile of fish into his mouth, barely chewing them before he swallowed.

“Those slimy bastards taste like mud. They even look like mud. Or gagh, but even gagh tastes better.” He frowned and took a swig out of the canister. Shaking his head in disapproval, he walked over to the cave’s wall to spit it out again. “Good thing we’ve got water. But what I wouldn’t do for a toothbrush to get that stuff out of my mouth. Oh, wait a minute!”

Khan watched him grab the tricorder and walk up the path leading outside.

 _I have to follow him. Now._ The tingling that still resonated on his skin and had left him dumbstruck didn’t allow for it, though. Something rooted him to the spot, reassuring him that Kirk wouldn’t run away again. He wouldn't, would he?

 _Fool!_ he admonished himself and jumped up. Training his eyes on the barely perceptible light that reached the inside of the cave, Khan felt his way along the wall. He hadn’t taken a dozen steps when the weak light of the tricorder was reflected on the rocks again. Kirk waved a twig of the bristly plants that grew at the entrance at him.

“The month as a Boy Scout finally paid off.” He broke off a small part of the twig and rubbed it over his gums and teeth.

“Try it out, it works.” After tearing off another twig, he presented it to Khan, who at first wasn’t able to do anything but stare at it. He couldn’t say why he was so strangely taken by the offer – it was just a piece of a plant after all. Yet when he accepted the twig with a noncommittal nod, he was instantaneously transported to another nondescript gesture, accompanied by a look of trusting green eyes back then.

Barely able to connect his thoughts to the present again, Khan forcefully took his mind off the pain that was lurking behind his memories. He sat up, wordlessly downed the cold and tough fish, and afterward tried out the twig. Kirk had been right, its abrasive texture and the neutral aroma cancelled out the revolting aftertaste and this made the prospect of even more living dishes less odious.

“So what’s better? The fish or the bugs?” Kirk asked.

“We shouldn’t eat too much of each of the species,” Khan answered. “We don’t know if they are poisonous.”

“And if they are?”

“Then you die,” Khan stated and Kirk snorted out a laugh.

“Of course, how could I forget about that?” He jumped up energetically. “Alright, let’s go and hunt some creepy-crawlies.”

The smile and the excitement were infectious, Khan conceded, making the following tasks of turning stones and digging in the sand for the wiggling animals considerably less annoying. He occasionally heard Kirk swearing in the distance and when they accidentally met on their trail, it became clear why.

“I suppose that’s your haul,” Kirk said and threw Khan’s rolled up shirt a dark glance.

“I take it you were out of luck,” Khan remarked.

“Those beasts are fast, I can’t get hold of ’em.”

Unrolling the shirt unveiled an assortment of small insect-like animals, a choice that didn’t do much to brighten Kirk’s spirits.

“Pick your favorites,” Khan offered.

“Aren’t they all the same?” Kirk huffed. “Mmh, that looks rather like a locust, can I have that? And I don’t think I can eat the ones with more legs than that. Maybe next time.” He chose three of the smaller animals, but had great difficulties eating them regardless. “Sorry I didn’t catch anything,” he apologized.

Khan shrugged. “Not very surprising.”

“Yeah, thanks. Can we really not eat any of the plants?” He bent down and ripped something off a low shrub. “That almost looks like a vegetable, doesn’t it? Like a very small grey zucchini.” He bit in it and winced. “Like a damn hard zucchini.”

“The plants aren’t edible. I’m convinced their strategies to protect themselves against the elements and the fauna make them indigestible for us.”

Kirk reined in his disappointment quickly. “Okay, then I’ll try my hand at those bugs again.” He wiped his brow, contemplating the skyline. “It’s not that hot yet. More purgatory than hell.”

He went off on his own and Khan returned to the entrance of the cave. The sun was already high in the sky and he was not going to follow Kirk just because his inviting smirk made it an almost natural course of action. He wouldn’t. Even when Kirk had been away for quite a while, longer than it was advisable during that part of the day.

 _I’m not going to look for him,_ Khan confirmed himself.

He forcefully ignored the many limbs of the creatures he was eating and studied the lichen growing in the shadow next him. It had adapted to the environmental conditions perfectly, its grey surface adorned with a myriad of small hair that could extract every trace of humidity from the air. It might even be an indicator for the cave’s entrance. On their way to the station they should ...

Khan gave a start. That had been his name, being called from a distance!

He leaped to his feet and started circling the rocks, unsure which direction he had to take in the absence of another call.

“Kirk?” he shouted after a while, already tasting salty sweat on his upper lip, yet he didn’t stop or pause until he finally heard a voice again.

“Over here!”

Racing toward the sound, Khan found Kirk at last, stretched out on his belly. Khan lunged, skidding through the sand before immediately trying to roll the prone body over.

“No, wait, don’t!” Kirk shouted and turned his head. “My arm’s stuck in here. One of the rocks came down when I, erm ... when I tried to reach between them because there was this thing, like a giant millipede and, well ...” He pulled at his arm in a futile gesture and made an apologetic face.

“You’re an idiot.” Khan inspected the structure of the stones. _A thoughtless imbecile._

“Hey, if not tasty, at least it was big.”

Khan shook his head. “The next time you might reconsider sticking your arm into a confined space on an unknown planet. Not that telling you that might do any good.” He carefully lifted the rock and Kirk pulled back the freed arm.

“Ah, I knew you’d come eventually.” Kirk moved his fingers. “Feels okay. So what’re we gonna do now?”

“We go back to the cave. Eat and drink. Then we sleep and prepare for tomorrow’s journey.” Khan turned around and started walking.

“So more fish on a live skewer instead of bugs? Sounds good. But what happens when we leave? Our water won’t last long once we’re in the desert.”

“It could be that the geological makeup of this area consists of a large system of underground caverns where the remaining water that hasn’t vaporized in the course of climate change is stored.”

“So we have to be lucky and find another entrance?”

“The vegetation growing there might also give us a hint. We won’t venture further than a day from this place so we can come back if we don’t find more water.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy Kirk’s curiosity and thankfully, he kept silent the path back to the cave. Upon their arrival, Kirk switched on the tricorder and led the way into the cave, but when they were able to stand again, he stopped. “Erm ...” He cleared his throat. Something was making him uncomfortable.

“Shut up,” Khan warned him. The day had seen enough unnecessary drama.

“I just wanted to say that you really saved my skin out there. Owe you another one.”

“Don’t mention it,” Khan said and quickened his steps, but Kirk dogged him.

“Were you afraid I’d bolt again?”

“Even you wouldn’t be that stupid,” Khan scoffed.

“Hey, come on, can’t I say thanks then?” Brought to a sudden halt by a hand that gripped his arm, Khan whipped around to glower at Kirk.

“I said don’t mention it,” he growled, irritation creeping up and forcing his jaw to clench. Kirk appeared to be completely unperturbed.

 _Stop it, stop .._. Khan pleaded inwardly.

“It’s becoming quite a habit lately, that saving thing I mean. Although of course all the talk about your crew should’ve given me a clue,” Kirk said good-naturedly.

“That wouldn’t be your first error of judgment,” Khan hissed and his pulse drummed uncomfortably in his temples. Distance. He needed more distance.

“You can’t frighten me. You were worried,” Kirk responded with a self-satisfied grin, and Khan desperately racked his brain for a counter-argument, but there was none. He had been alarmed. Blindly, he had run through the desert to find him. To save Kirk as if he _mattered_.

But he didn’t. Those who really meant something were far away. Only that weak human was with him – and he was too near again.

“Let go of me. Now!” Khan snarled.

Forcefully, Khan shoved Kirk away, ending his grip on the overall – except that Kirk had let go at the same moment and the full impact of the push hit him. He staggered and slipped before the tricorder clattered on the ground, masking a dull thud. Kirk slumped down.

"No ..." Khan breathed. He scrambled for the tricorder to get some light and then felt for Kirk’s pulse. It was steady, but there was blood at the back of the head and the wound seemed to be considerable. On his temple, swelling became visible, too. Khan checked the skull to determine if there was a fracture, but he couldn’t tell by touch. He didn’t know.

His feet had already carried him to the pond, though, and he retrieved the medical kit Kirk had left there. Quickly, Khan dumped the contents of the bag on the ground.

Nothing of interest – typical Starfleet. A hypospray against pain, which could be a marginal help, one against burns – and that was it. So what could he do?

_Yet why should I do anything?_

Appalled, Khan stepped back from the man on the ground and stopped only at the wall of the cave. He shouldn’t care – even Kirk had said it. It wouldn’t make a difference if he saved him, he wasn’t his crew and he especially wasn’t _him_.

Groaning, Kirk stirred but almost instantly, he was quiet again, a stretch of silence that could have been a minute or hours, Khan couldn’t say. Paralyzed, he sat at the foot of the wall and stared at the lump lying opposite him, just as motionless. Now and then a twitching and a shudder went through Kirk’s body so Khan assumed he was still alive.

_That’s all I need to know. I won’t care. Not for him._

“Spock?” It sounded more like a moan than a name. “Bones?”

Khan heard his own teeth grinding and he squeezed his eyes shut. Jahnav would have called for him, but he hadn’t been there. No one had been with him when he had met his end. No one could have saved him like it was possible to save Kirk.

Would it make sense? Going on sharing food and water, watching out for someone who was too weak to survive on his own? As much as Khan tried to fight it, his initial reaction to leave Kirk behind gave way to doubt that chewed at the edges of his conscience. He dismissed it angrily but it forced its way up again, compelling him to get up and face his enemy.

Khan knelt down, his hand automatically reaching out to touch the forehead. It was warmer than normal – had Kirk contracted an infection?

“Khan?” the man’s weak voice rasped, and there it was again, the hand that had clung to Khan so often in the previous days, now holding on to his shirt. “Is that you?”

It must have been that imploring voice which got to him at last, he had no other explanation for the flurry of movement that followed; trained routines taking over until Khan had the impression that he was watching someone else. Fingers altered a hypospray device to draw blood and fix the container on the second one. They rolled up Kirk’s sleeve. Injected the blood.

When it was over, he didn’t stay with Kirk. He went to the pond, to eat, drink, and do everything to avoid dwelling on what had just happened. He ordered his thoughts to calm down and dismiss the episode as irrelevant, but needed hours to fall asleep regardless.

 

*****

Gentle nudging coaxed him awake again.

“It’s already dawn, let’s hit the road.”

Khan blinked. Tricorder in hand, Kirk sat beside him, and when he had made sure that Khan was awake, he stood up and took a couple of swigs from the canister.

“Seafood buffet for breakfast?” Kirk asked.

 _Move on,_ Khan ordered himself. _Last night was inconsequential._

He dunked his arm into the water and endured Kirk’s fingertips on his skin. Despite its novelty, the ritual already seemed so ingrained that it was not necessary to speak. Unfazed by the silence, Kirk ate the fish and then followed Khan out of the cave.

“You know, Khan …” Kirk had not started to walk but still remained at the entrance and was deeply inhaling the cool morning air.

Khan threw him an impatient look.

“It’s strange,” Kirk said without paying the implied request to leave any heed. “I can’t remember falling asleep. Do you know why I slept on those damned uncomfortable rocks?”

“Your question presupposes that this interests me. Which is not the case, I can assure you.” Khan brushed past Kirk and marched uphill, but Kirk stayed hard on his heels.

“It feels a bit like a blackout, so what the hell happened?”

Intensely, Khan hoped that Kirk wouldn’t touch him and fortunately, Kirk broke into a light jog to keep up instead of trying to hold him back.

“I must have slept like the dead because I feel brand new today. All I remember was us being out in the heat yesterday and … wait, I got stuck between those rocks and you helped me. Did I get a heatstroke or something?”

“Must have been it.” Khan felt Kirk’s eyes observing him curiously and he turned his head away.

“No, wait, we went back to the cave and you got into some sort of foul mood. We fought and then there’s nothing.” Kirk dashed forward and blocked Khan’s way, making him stop dead in his tracks. “What happened after that, damn it? I want an explanation and you’d better give it to me now!”

 _He won’t let go of it. It’s not in his nature to let things be,_ Khan thought to himself as he looked at Kirk’s irate face.

“It was my mistake,” he sighed. “So I rectified it.”

“What? I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about!”

“I injured you and in return I healed you.”

“But we don’t have any– ”

“I gave you my blood,” Khan ground out and jostled Kirk away to resume his path.

“But why?” The hand again, rooting him to the spot. And a searching gaze that showed just a hint of blue in the early morning light.

“You’re the only crew I have. You have to suffice for now.”

Kirk looked dumbstruck like he had the moment when the ship had been uncontrollably approaching the planet, but then dozens of tiny muscles in his face tensed, making laugh lines appear and the corners of his mouth move. Khan knew that he should tear his eyes away from the smile directed at him yet he couldn’t find the resolve to do so.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to question what you did. It’s actually quite ... you know ...” Kirk said. Somewhat shamefaced, he turned around and went on walking, studying the ground intently.

The day passed uneventfully after that, yet something was different. Khan couldn’t put his finger on it although it was almost tangible. They didn’t talk and instead walked in synchronized motion, always searching for entrances to the cave system but not finding any. When it was becoming too dark to go on, Khan only had to nod toward a rock and without any more prompting, Kirk lay down beside it.

Looking at the stars, Khan waited for the breathing next to him to become more regular but it stayed the same, a slight trembling indicating the beginning of hypothermia. So he rolled over and aligned the bodies, feeling Kirk leaning into him, Kirk's heart rate slowing down and his own attuning to it almost imperceptibly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, snogandagrope, for making this possible despite the vicious cold that struck you down. Better than all the flowers and chocolates in the world.


	6. Chapter 6

From a distance, someone called his name, but he didn’t pay attention to it – other things mattered more.

_Burning. I’m burning up._

Not just he himself, simply everything around him was on fire and he needed to become one with that heat, he wanted to _become_ that heat.

Bewildered, Khan briefly thought that the sun was already up although he couldn’t feel it on his eyelids. Above all, the fire was somewhere else. It was pooled in his groin, at the tip of his cock, pulling him towards a long forgotten need that he suddenly didn’t want to deny anymore.

Khan’s eyes snapped open. What he could see was the same as when he had fallen asleep, Kirk’s cropped hair, the rock. Everything he _felt_ was completely altered though, and he unsuccessfully tried to comprehend what his hands were doing, digging in taut flesh.

The overall. What had happened to Kirk’s overall? Where was his own –?

Khan’s breath caught when he felt his penis gliding over the sweat-covered skin of the crack, the buttocks’ hard muscles embedding his erection. Straining against the puckered entrance, he wanted to give in to the urge to flex his hip and immerse his cock in that heat he was craving with a vengeance.

_Nearer. And more!_

Only peripherally did his mind register the body next to him becoming immobile when it was being pulled closer.

More of Kirk’s warm back. Abdominal muscles working under the skin. Khan buried his nose in the nape before him, breathing in. _Human arousal_. _Wrong_. _It was wrong!_

With all the willpower he could muster, Khan rolled over, the loss of skin contact nearly blacking him out with desire.

“No!” He heard Kirk’s voice call, but before he could react, he was already straddled. “I want ...”

The erection’s rubbing against his own became almost a grind when Kirk made sure that the bodies stayed aligned. It could have chafed him or inflicted wounds though, Khan wouldn’t have cared because the friction it caused was much too delicious.

A moan resounded among the rocks and he felt it vibrating in his chest. Had it really been he himself?

“Kirk.” His voice was too weak, it didn’t want to cooperate, just like his hands, which only itched to touch that skin again.

“Don’t ... stop!” Kirk rasped and his hot breath in the crook of Khan’s neck was all it needed to give in to the strength that fixed him on the ground. Khan let his hands roam over the broad expanse of Kirk's back and then clasped his waist to increase the friction of their cocks even more.

 _No!_ his mind screamed. The sublime sensations overwhelming him could mask it to a degree, but no matter how compelling the mix of Kirk’s pleas and the urgency of their movements, something was wrong.

“God, yes!” Kirk groaned.

Slowly, the unsettling realization lurking at the back of Khan’s head made its advance at last: _Everything_ was wrong. And solely one thing had changed since the previous day, so it had to be the cause of what was happening.

“It’s the blood …” he managed to say and to his relief, Kirk stopped moving. Khan doubted he would have been able to react the same way, his hands still refusing to let go. Panting, Kirk hovered over him, questioning brows clearly visible in the dim light.

“What?”

“I’m not certain, I’ve never been … in close contact with the few who have received my blood.” Khan maneuvered Kirk to the side, thankful that he was able to put some room between them.

“I don’t get it.” Flabbergasted, Kirk continued to stare at him, his erection only wilting marginally. Khan tore his eyes away and hectically pulled up his trousers.

“Dress, Kirk, we’ll march on,” he commanded. He heaved himself up but hoped that Kirk would remain where he was for a while. The moment he turned around and started to walk though, he heard Kirk scramble to his feet, the steps closing up to him quickly afterward.

“You mean because you gave me your blood, I’m trying to jump your bones now?”

“It’s very likely.” Khan stared straight ahead. “The most probable scenario is an acute stimulation brought up by the temporary similarities in our genetic makeup. Once the blood is replaced by your system, the symptoms will vanish.”

“And till then?” Kirk asked, exasperated, and Khan threw him a dark look.

“Have you ever considered paying certain things no heed because this course of action might be the least trouble?” Going by his grimace, even Kirk himself didn’t regard this as very likely, eliciting an annoyed snort in Khan. “Of course not, if there’s a chance to ruin things by boldly walking where no man has ever botched up anything before, you take it.”

“That’s pure speculation.” Kirk grinned and suddenly picked up his pace to pass Khan and imitate an obstacle course by alternately jumping and circling small rocks.

“If this is but a fraction of how you feel all the time, you’re a lucky man,” he shouted.

“This has nothing to do with luck, I–”

“You were made like that, I get it.” Kirk peered over his shoulder to roll his eyes. “But it’s still a helluva feeling. No wonder you’re such a conceited ass.”

“Enjoy it as long as you can, but make sure that you don’t end up flattened. That would exceed the regenerative capabilities.”

Kirk had the audacity to wink at him and then continued his silly tournament with himself, vanishing behind the next rock. Khan was tempted to follow him and stop his folly if necessary, the urge to protect instinctively taking over.

 _The blood’s effect is reciprocal,_ Khan reminded himself. It had to have something to do with the fact that Kirk wasn’t augmented ...

A yelp from Kirk’s direction and Khan clenched his teeth. This time, he wouldn’t run to him although the uncalled-for need to check if Kirk was unhurt nearly took his breath away.

 _Biology’s forcing me to act like that,_ he told himself, and schooled his face into an unconcerned mask when he heard Kirk approaching. It was enough that relief coursed through his veins like an ecstatic torrent, there was no necessity to _show_ it above all.

“Look!” Kirk shouted. “That’s one of them! The kind I couldn’t catch yesterday!” He presented Khan a multilegged animal and beamed with pride at his accomplishment. Even an ironically raised eyebrow didn’t deter him.

“So what do you want to have? Head or tail?” Khan asked with a smirk, and finally Kirk’s enthusiasm abated.

“Guess there’s no big difference” he said, sceptically eyeing his prey. “Ugh, maybe we store it for dog days.”

“It’s rather big, thirty centimeters at least, and the shell looks very hard. We could try to roast it by putting it on a stone when the sun is highest,” Khan suggested. “We have to be careful though, there must be scavengers around as I haven’t seen any carrion so far.” He continued walking, Kirk trotting next to him. Their arms were almost touching, but Khan found that he suddenly didn’t care anymore.

“Wonder why they haven’t nibbled at us while we were sleeping.”

An accidental bump of the shoulders temporarily switched Khan’s mind off, causing what felt like an electric jolt charging him up with craving.

“Mmh,” he mumbled.

Catching up with the topic with some difficulty, Khan only managed a shrug to go with the noncommittal sound; the irritation of the aftershocks was still in his bones when he formulated an answer at last.

“The moment we get injured, they might be all over us.” Concentrating on the ground, Khan fought what felt like a decreasing authority over his mind and body. He wouldn’t lose command over himself, would he?

“Good thing you didn’t let me die in that cave,” Kirk laughed. “That would’ve been a feast.”

“I don’t share,” Khan hissed, but Kirk gave him a toothy smile in return.

“Ah, yeah, that. The next time you threaten someone with cannibalism, you should refrain from saving him multiple times. Honestly, you suck as a tyrant.”

“I’ve never been a tyrant,” Khan said through gritted teeth.

“That’s not what Spock told me.”

Balling his hands into fists, Khan smothered the anger flaring up. “Then you should’ve done your own reading for a change.”

“Well, spill it out. It’s never too late for a history lesson.” He seemed genuinely interested, Khan thought, and if he himself hadn’t felt like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, he might haven even considered sharing some episodes of his life.

“Those times were complex,” he said curtly. “There’s no use talking about them.”

“Chickenshit,” Kirk scoffed. “You’re just afraid you don’t come out the hero.”

Whatever increase in strength Kirk experienced through the blood, it didn’t match the shove that sent him against the rock and pushed him into it. Khan briefly relished the affirmation of his power, sensing a nondescript need to do something else with it instead of immobilizing Kirk and glowering at him.

“You don’t know anything.”

“I at least ...” Kirk stopped and seemed to lose his focus. “Shit,” he cursed breathlessly. “I’m sorry ...”

Khan followed the movement of Kirk’s head with his eyes and immediately the absence of mind made sense. Kirk was scowling at the bulge in his lap, a rather helpless attempt to reduce it, and just the mere sight of it presented Khan with just one option.

“I give you some privacy to deal with it.” He released Kirk like a red-hot piece of metal and turned around. “I’ll wait for you a bit further along the way,” he added, but didn’t check if Kirk had heard him. This day was not going to be easy for both of them, Khan acknowledged to himself, and searched for a suitable place in the shadow, heading further away than strictly necessary. There was no need to accidentally overhear Kirk getting vocal during his activities.

_But would he make any noises at all?_

Would Kirk try to speed things up? Frantically pumping his cock in a desperate race to completion? And would unbidden flashes of the events of this morning torment him?

Sitting down in the sand, Khan closed his eyes and invited the impressions of some hours ago in, challenging them to throw him off track. Surprised by their force when they rushed forward, he interrupted the journey through his memories abruptly when a flashback to the weight of Kirk’s body on him directed enough heat to his crotch to render his trousers exceedingly uncomfortable. The images wouldn’t simply vanish though, supplying him with an array of memories that he could only passably get under control until Kirk arrived.

“Don’t ... say a word,” Kirk warned him. “This has never happened.”

A glance at the trousers proved that the bulge was gone, but the look Kirk threw him was hard to decipher. It mostly resembled the moment when he had been crazy with hunger, Khan mused, but put it down to the embarrassment of the situation.

Yet the strained silence that accompanied them for the rest of their walk was telling enough: something had not worked out the way it had been planned. Finding a place for the millipede to roast and watching it gave them a task and Khan only wished Kirk had left his shirt on for that distraction to function properly. Not that he could tell him so, just like every other topic of conversation apart from their unappetizing lunch was off-limits, it seemed.

The lack of small talk didn’t trouble Khan as much as the fact that he couldn’t block Kirk’s eyes on him. He _knew_ he was being observed although he never caught him out, and the more the day wore on, the less he was able to endure the gaze that all but left burn marks on its trail down his back. Each step he took made it more unbearable, arousal prickling in every cell of his body, and he was sure he could even taste it on his tongue.

 _I won’t give in,_ he assured himself.

If he lost it now, he’d cause chaos – something that would surely endanger the whole endeavor.

“I think we should rest here,” Kirk said from behind, the first utterance for hours yanking Khan from his inner monolog.

“It’s still a bit too early,” he answered. “The sun’s just set and we’ll–”

“I’m convinced that now’s exactly the right time,” Kirk interrupted him with a strangled voice and alarmed, Khan turned around. “I’m in great need … of a break.”

It was an advantage that there was still enough light. If he hadn’t noticed the distraught face before Kirk grabbed his collar and pulled him to the ground for all he was worth, Khan was sure that he wouldn’t have relented.

“I won’t bother you again, I promise,” Kirk rasped and shuffled nearer. “But I can’t do this without you, I don’t know why.”

 _It’s the blood,_ Khan added inwardly, but he wasn’t able to say it. Even clothed, he got hard at the first tentative rubbing of their cocks, the day’s resolve vanishing in a heartbeat.

“I only know that I need you to touch me. Please do it, do it now,” Kirk pleaded. “I can’t ... like that any longer ...”

Khan ripped down their trousers to grab their cocks with one hand, and just like in the morning, he felt as if some strange force took over. Instinctively, he pulled Kirk’s other hand to his mouth and licked he palm before he signaled it to join the grip. Kirk had been right. The moment a hand encircled Khan’s hardness, it made him almost delirious with sensations.

Determinedly, he stifled the urge to tear off their clothes and continue where he had stopped in the morning. Instead he let Kirk take the lead, let the firm hand decide on speed and rhythm, and just clutched Kirk’s body to bring them closer to each other. It was safer that way. Just Kirk’s insistent whisper setting the boundaries, his strength …

“I need ... harder,” he appealed to Khan urgently.

The fingers around his dick tightened their grip, making it impossible for Khan not to surrender to them. Responding with a groan, he gave in to the agonizing friction that made him want to burst. It viciously broke his will and forced him to linger on the brink of completion, the skilled fingers reducing him to nothing but a helpless, quivering body.

“Please …” Khan implored, and Kirk took pity at last, blanking out Khan’s mind with a single flick of his hand. Lust ignited like a chain reaction, traveling through his system in blissful tremors, and they had not yet lessened when Khan felt Kirk’s hoarse cry against his shoulder. Warm semen mingled with his and Kirk desperately gasped for air until finally, Khan sensed the tension seeping from the body clinging to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best of everything (especially health at the moment) to my beta snogandagrope.


	7. Chapter 7

The feverish turmoil was over. Khan knew it the moment he woke up and he hastened to put some distance between Kirk and himself. As the early morning sun already started to dust the stones with a sheen of light, it was necessary to get up, but Khan couldn’t help feeling slightly reluctant to wake Kirk.

Instead he shifted, bending his arm to prop his head on his hand, and he forced himself to contemplate the previous night’s activities with nothing more than a sense of mild irritation.

It was odd that, after the heated encounter, Kirk and he had ended up nestled into their usual position – as if the unrest had drained them of their energy and a completely natural way to recharge was falling asleep like they had done before.

Khan repressed a snort at the thought. The situation was entirely different to the nights in the desert because this was not about survival. It had been the blood’s fault, so much was clear. Now that the biological influence was stopped, they could hopefully take up their march without such disturbances.

 _After Kirk eventually gets over what he’s done_ , Khan mused. Listening to the regular breathing, he was thankful for the delay of the inevitable outburst. Until then, the regular inhaling and exhaling, occasionally interrupted by spells of snoring and a quiet murmur, formed the night’s soothing background sounds Khan had become accustomed to.

 _He looks peaceful_ , he thought to himself after Kirk had turned on his back, giving Khan a chance to study the face. Soft despite the stubble, but the exertion of the previous days had left its traces as lines around the mouth were already getting deeper. The sunburn had abated a little, with skin on the nose slightly peeling off whereas the rest of the face had tanned.

 _He’s resilient,_ Khan noted with some astonishment. _Can definitely endure more than I had initially anticipated. Not entirely the pampered Starfleet …_

Kirk stirred and then blinked weakly, turning his head to Khan when he had adapted to the half-light. Steeling himself for an attack, Khan tensed, but Kirk just continued to look at him through hooded eyes.

“Better?” Khan asked tersely, and Kirk appeared to snap out of whatever abstraction he had been lost in to start stretching his limbs like he was testing their presence.

“Nah, not really,” he said and yawned violently. “Rather a bit worn out. As if someone pulled the plug. That means that the blood’s effect is gone, I think.”

“Then we shouldn’t experience more of those episodes.” Khan sat up, but hesitated to move away and also Kirk just rolled over and leaned on the rock with his shoulders.

“Yeah, er, I’m sorry about that,” Kirk said contritely, evading Khan’s gaze. “I really don’t know what came over me ...”

“You showed considerable self-control in view of the situation.”

Kirk’s head snapped up. “I did?” he asked, disbelief written all over his face. “It rather feels like I ran around with a hard-on the entire day until I finally forced myself on you.”

“That’s not the case, I can assure you.”

“Worked both ways, the blood, right?”

For Khan, Kirk’s knowing grin became a bit too much to endure in such a relaxed position and so he got up, Kirk following him. “I’m afraid it did.”

“Quite easy to see,” Kirk remarked.

“I think the night’s events were proof–”

“No, I can really _see_ it,” he laughed. “Mighty Khan with jizz on his shirt? Who would’ve expected that?”

“In turn, I suppose you in semen-stained trousers isn’t such a rare occurrence,” Khan retorted dryly after glancing down at Kirk.

“Got me.” That grin again. “Now what? Do I at least get a cricket and a locust for my trouble? You won’t ditch me without a proper breakfast, will you?”

Khan felt the corners of his mouth twitch. Kirk really was resilient, no matter the situation, his coping mechanisms showed him a way to deal with it. What would it be like, Khan wondered, to have such a positive outlook on life?

“I’ll try to satisfy your animal desires as well as I can,” he huffed in feigned obedience, surprised at how good it felt to hear Kirk laughing out loud.

Catching breakfast, eating, walking, and searching for an entrance to a cave with water – everything had become automatic, resembling their peaceful cooperation of two days ago so much that Khan suspected the workings of the blood again. Yet it was impossible, the highly potent components were usually replaced by his body so quickly that they surely hadn’t survived until now.

It didn’t matter why Kirk and he got along. There was no use wasting energy on unnecessary antagonism, Khan reminded himself, although he shouldn’t become negligent in the face of such tranquility. Almost missing the narrow gap in the rock, as reassuringly comfortable as it had felt to amble alongside Kirk through the blistering heat, Khan immediately started to lift the heavy stones that blocked most of the entrance to the cave.

“Hell, what a relief to quit wading through lava,” Kirk groaned and squeezed through the newly formed hole.

“Stop yammering.”

“Hey, some of us can’t genetically mojo our way through this desert,” Kirk retorted. “Now go and catch us some fish, I’m starving!”

Khan couldn’t maintain the frown for very long as Kirk simply crawled on with the tricorder, ignoring him. So Khan overrode his initial resistance and instead took up the routine of bites and plucking when they reached the water.

“Not so many of them in this pond, right?” Kirk asked and ripped off the last of the wiggling animals. He held on to Khan’s arm like he had done before and observed the skin healing. “Even after experiencing a fraction of what it can do, I still cannot believe it sometimes.”

Was that a caress? Bewildered, Khan looked up but Kirk’s eyes were still dwelling on the arm absentmindedly, following the thumb’s journey towards the wrist’s pulse point with their gaze.

“How is it never to be afraid?” Kirk asked.

“What makes you think this is the case?”

“You’re so much less likely to die,” Kirk said and slowly let go of the arm.

“And what does that say about the way I live?”

Kirk paused and looked up to study Khan’s face curiously. “I don’t know, really.”

“A lacking concern for your own life doesn’t mean you don’t know fear.” Khan paused, briefly unsure how to continue. “It depends on the other things you … cherish.”

“I think I understand that,” Kirk said with deep conviction. “Anyway, I’d like to feel for just one day how it is to have all that power going for me. But minus the raging hard-on.”

“Genetical augmentation doesn’t help much when around you there are only dry plants and several billion tons of sand,” Khan said offhandedly.

“And we can’t eliminate the danger that I’d become a fucked up bastard like you.” Kirk’s words were barely comprehensible as he mumbled them through a mouth full of fish.

“Very mature,” Khan remarked.

“ _Very mature_ ,” Kirk imitated him. “You can’t even swear right.”

“Shut up and take your nap, Kirk, I don’t want to extract your sorry ass from some godforsaken place again.”

Khan decided that there was nothing wrong with liking the smile Kirk directed at him before he switched off the tricorder. When the breathing had become regular, Khan illuminated the cave again. He’d make sure that there were no unpleasant surprises during Kirk’s sleep.

_Solely to protect us both, nothing else._

Although telling this to himself over and over again, Khan couldn’t subdue his impatience completely. But what for? He had peace at last, a break from the continuous necessity to _interact_.

Something was still wrong and he couldn’t place the changes that saw him restless and calm at the same time. They didn’t make any sense – unless Kirk and he had been infected with an unknown disease that changed rational thinking.

Khan dismissed that notion. If there was something in their systems, it wouldn’t have had the same effects on both of them.

Getting lost on a planet could do this to anyone, Khan decided. A certain degree of solidarity was unavoidable in such a situation.

Time passed slowly, though, and when Kirk finally opened his eyes again, the odd sensation that had caused mild anticipation before, settled down on Khan’s mind again.

“And now?” Kirk asked.

“Still early afternoon.”

“So more waiting to avoid melting?”

“Yes.”

Silence again. To his own surprise, Khan would have liked to add something to start a conversation, but he held himself back, thrown off track by Kirk’s stare. Just like in the morning, Kirk let his gaze linger on an unidentifiable spot on Khan’s shoulder. As if he was trying not to look him in the eye.

 _It’s just tiredness,_ Khan thought, when Kirk shook his head to himself and grabbed the tricorder.

“I’ll sneak a peek.” Kirk went to the exit. Hearing shuffling that documented Kirk’s repeated attempts to leave the cave, Khan waited because he knew that it was too early. The human internal chronometer was not accurate enough.

“Bug fest?” He heard Kirk ask and Khan got up. Too soon or not, anything was better than sitting in the cave, alone.

“On my way.”

Kirk had already vanished when Khan squeezed through the opening and when Khan returned with his catch, he saw Kirk again, sitting in front of the cave’s entrance, hairline wet with sweat.

“Fuck, I hate those little beasts,” Kirk cursed and took a sip from the canister.

“Just because they can outwit you doesn't mean they are less worthy adversaries.” Khan paused for some mock deliberation. “Well, it does, actually.”

“Ass,” Kirk huffed, but accepted the animals handed to him. “I don’t know what’s worse, the slimy fish or the crawlies,” he whined and screwed up his face.

“They both produce considerable revulsion in taste and consistency.” Khan picked a random creature to bite it in half.

“Sure, maître,” Kirk joked. “Sad that we didn’t strand on a different planet, really. It didn’t have to be Risa, but fewer stones and some fruit would’ve been nice.”

He lay back and supported his head in the crook of his arm, looking at the first star that became visible in the sky.

“It could have been worse,” Khan said and joined him. “In a couple of million years, the red giant would have evaporated us.”

Kirk snorted. “But I would’ve never anticipated stranding in a gigantic sandpit. You see, when I was a kid, I always wanted to fly to the stars, imagining all the adventures and discoveries.”

“And just now you realized that you could eventually end up as a skull bleaching in the sun?”

“I think the academy made that clear already,” Kirk laughed, but immediately a hint of sadness overshadowed his eyes. “The first time I learned about the amounts of death waiting for me out here was on a research mission. It was supposed to be an exercise, but the engines failed when we were cataloging a magnetar. We escaped by the hair. Wilkins didn’t.”

Wistfully, he continued gazing upwards. “Have you ever seen a binary star system? Those two stars I witnessed were gravitating around their center so fast that they looked like a dance of light. And they will go on for almost an eternity. Just like that.”

Kirk went on about how it was to be flying through the storms on Venus with a shuttle, but Khan couldn’t concentrate on the words anymore. In the glow of early sunset, Kirk looked ... radiant.

Stretching out an arm to accidentally brush his hand, reaching for something and touch his face as an unforeseen side effect – those and more scenarios suddenly crossed Khan’s mind and were irretrievably connected to the lingering feeling of Kirk’s fingers gently trailing down his arm.

Khan subdued a spell of panic.

“You told me about those plants, right?” he heard Kirk say. “The ones that could show a cave?” Yet before Khan could react, Kirk had grabbed the canister and was already gone.

“I think I found another one!” Kirk yelled and Khan hastened to follow the voice only to see Kirk sliding into a hole in the ground.

“You know what I’ll do now that we have an alternative source for drinking water?” Kirk shouted and Khan hurriedly crawled through the tunnel to get to the roomier part of the cave where Kirk was waiting for him.

“Can’t get any more embarrassing than yesterday, can it?” Kirk continued with a smirk when Khan had reached him.

“You mean when I left you in the desert so you could pleasure yourself?”

“Among other things, right, you jerk.”

“And what does that have to ...?” Khan asked, but Kirk was starting to undress, forcefully pushing down his trousers.

“What are you doing?” Khan asked.

“What do you think? I’m going to wash my trousers. Remember? Stained and all that.”

“It’s irrelevant if our clothes are clean. And you can do this at the station once we arrive.” Why did his voice sound so rough? His eyes glued to Kirk’s back, he observed him kneeling in front of the pond. The moment he bent forward to immerse the clothes in the water, Khan tore his gaze away.

“Yeah, whenever that will be,” Kirk scoffed. “And for all we know it could be Klingon, and then there surely won’t be a bathroom or the like. I suppose they roll in the sand now and then, from what I’ve smelled so far.”

“You’re a born diplomat,” Khan remarked.

“Yeah, whatever. It seems the fish don’t bite when there are clothes in the water. Gimme your shirt, it’s my fault it’s dirty anyway.”

“No, thank you, I’m fine.”

Yet washing oneself wasn’t such a far-fetched idea, Khan admitted to himself. He got rid of the top of the overall before he could have any second thoughts. From what he heard, Kirk was already wringing out his washing and then the canister was being handled before water splashed down on the rocks.

“That doesn’t ... work right!” Kirk ranted and the noise of the water stopped. “And it could be so easy.” The frustration in his voice carried a hint of anger and Khan looked up to find out what he was up to. Trying to ignore the fact that Kirk was now stark naked, Khan fixed his eyes on the face that glowered at the pond. “I’d really like to take a bath, but I’m not interested at all in my dick serving as fish bait.”

“That won’t necessarily be the case,” Khan responded, recalling his different experiences with the species. “The fish seem to be deterred by fast movements.” Experimentally, he dipped his hand into the water, stirring quickly. By and by he reduced the speed until the first fish struck and he drew back.

“I’ll keep them away so you can ... bathe.”

“You what …?”

Khan hurriedly stepped out of his trousers and the uncomfortable excuse for underwear Starfleet had provided him with, and ran into the pond, splashing wildly. He hoped intently that his theory was true.

“Come in already!” he called when no sharp teeth attacked him, and Kirk, who had been standing at the water’s edge, mouth hanging open, was finally stung into action.

“It’s your fault if I get my balls perforated!” Kirk shouted and dove under. Emerging again, he scrubbed himself vigorously and then jumped up to playfully shove a handful of water at Khan. “Your turn.”

Concentrating on his task and not paying attention to Kirk bouncing around him, Khan was almost sure that he had managed to ride out the temptation of too much naked skin when suddenly, Kirk was gone and in the next second, hands grabbed Khan’s ankles and he was ripped off his feet. Thrashing with his arms to avoid being dunked as well as bitten, he scanned the surface until he saw Kirk emerging again.

“You’re such a wuss!” Kirk laughed. “Catch me if you can!”

“You think you can escape me?” Khan shouted, but Kirk threw him a grin over his shoulder.

“Who says I want to?” He turned on his heels and jumped, clutching Khan’s waist to wrestle him underwater, warm skin searching as much contact as possible. It briefly flashed through Khan’s mind that the touch earlier that day had indeed been a caress and right now, this wasn’t just a playful fight. Those fleeting realizations were eclipsed by the drowning out of everything around him, though, when he let himself be submerged – his entire cosmos reduced to Kirk’s arms around his torso and his face on his chest.

All his defenses paralyzed, Khan didn’t muster more than weak movements that were far from a convincing attempt to break away. Writhing to ensure more of their skin was aligning, he felt his arousal return full force.

_Touch! Accumulate all senses where there’s skin on skin. And more of that! Much more!_

He clutched Kirk who, in turn, hectically freed himself from the entanglement, but before Khan could process the events, his arm was grabbed and he was brutally pulled out of the water.

“Shit, they’re back!” Kirk shouted when they surfaced again. “We have to get out of here.”

Khan hadn’t even realized the fish’s miniature teeth on his throat. Frantically, he stumbled to the shore and then let himself drop on the ground next to Kirk.

“The blood should be out of the system by now, right?” Kirk panted and tore some fish off his chest and Khan’s neck.

“Yes, definitely.”

“What’s this then?” he asked and pointed at their erections.

“I don’t need an excuse,” Khan murmured, combing his hair back with his fingers. “I’ve gone a couple of hundred years without.”

Kirk laughed. “Sounds fair.”

“I suppose in your case it’s just a habit.”

“Why do you always assume that I’m such a horndog?” Kirk protested. “It’s not written on my forehead, is it? Do I ogle every piece of flesh that crosses my path?”

“Possibly,” Khan said and smirked. “But I suppose it doesn’t require any activity on your part most of the time.”

Kirk gave a laugh, but then stopped, squinting his eyes. “Was that a compliment?”

Khan tried to achieve neutrally pinched lips, but going by Kirk’s leer, he seemed to have failed. A frown also didn’t distract Kirk, if anything, his eyes became even more searching.

“A couple of hundred years you said?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but pushed himself up and unceremoniously sat astride Khan’s legs. Judging by the slightly wary look, he was waiting for some kind of rebuff, but Khan was sure that his mind’s order to _do something!_ , alternatingly addressing himself and Kirk, could be really heard echoing in the cave. So he was immensely relieved to see a quizzical smile light up the other man’s face.

“Well, then it’s about time someone acquaints you with life’s little pleasures again,” Kirk announced and went on all fours. “Maybe that will help a bit with that foul mood of yours.”

Speechless, Khan saw Kirk moving downward, the slowness bordering torture, but when he finally bent his head and let the tip of the cock slip past his firm lips, the friction was enough to make Khan cry out. Kirk withdrew to throw him a suggestive look.

“I’ll try to take it slow, you’re a bit rusty after all.” Khan was thankful for that moment of concentration before Kirk dove down to engulf his hardness again. A tongue felt along the rim, gentle suction accompanied the movements – and Khan nearly lost control. There was just one solution: He had to go deeper to reduce the contact to the sensitive glans and avoid the tongue’s curious exploration – or he wouldn’t last.

Khan flexed his hips, but Kirk adapted, and the sight of Kirk taking as much as possible of the length in his mouth didn’t make it any easier to bear, the slick tongue massaging each centimeter after it penetrated the lips. It was too early, much too early, Khan thought desperately, but on their own accord, his hands grabbed the blond hair and set a quick rhythm.

Mindlessly, he rushed toward completion. At the mercy of Kirk’s demanding mouth, which seemed to have been made just for him, the suction pooled desire on the tip of his cock to prepare him for a perfect eruption.

When it came at last, blinding him with bliss, Khan plunged into the wet and hot cavern until finally, his quavering body let itself being taken over by an unprecedented feeling of contentedness.

Breathlessly, he took in Kirk’s satisfied grin, too smug to endure under normal circumstances, but the words that left Khan’s mouth to comment the lofty self-confidence seemed to have been superimposed by some other force than reason.

“I’d reciprocate, but I need you to fuck me,” he heard himself say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making the quick update possible, snogandagrope!


	8. Chapter 8

Wide-eyed, Kirk stared at him, and Khan’s mind raced.

“You can’t hurt me, remember?” he said in a haphazard attempt to reduce Kirk’s apprehensiveness. “I can take it rough.”

Although he could barely stand the weakness such a signal showed, Khan let the corners of his mouth quirk a smile, trying to silence whatever scruples Kirk had. Something was stronger than the disgust at making himself so vulnerable.

Absentmindedly, Kirk wiped some semen from his chin, the questioning look from before back on his face.

“No, you won’t,” he said at last and lowered his head.

Khan breathed in as if he could make the stale air of refusal disappear when he exhaled again.

“Then we should–” Khan started only to be cut off by Kirk’s soft tongue, trailing a titillating path down his scrotum. “What–?”

One of his testicles was sucked in, sending Khan’s thoughts into a dizzying spiral of diffuse longing - as enjoyable as the slick warmth engulfed him. Not even when it disappeared again and Kirk rolled him over on his belly did a fleeting thought of resistance cross Khan’s mind.

A puff of breath announced Kirk’s voice by his ear.

“You told me that your powers don’t have much to do with the way you live,” it said and slowly, a hand moved down the small of Khan’s back. It followed the natural trail it found there, even grazing the entrance, but it didn’t linger, let alone push in. Khan was on the verge of begging for it to return when another finger followed in its wake. Spit-covered, it saved him, and the moment more of the digits worked their way in, Khan thanked whatever deity had been worshipped in this solar system for its mercy.

He pushed himself up and didn’t care if he looked like an animal in heat when he forced the fingers to go in quicker than Kirk might have planned.

“More!” Khan demanded, and just seconds later, he felt the tip of the cock penetrate him. Without warning, he moved back and sheathed the entire length, Kirk’s choked groan be damned.

“Fuck, why–?”

“Get on with it!” Khan rasped, and to his relief, Kirk complied. Finally, there was something to counter the burning need that was continually working its way through the hazy satisfaction, consuming it and threatening to cancel out Kahn’s sanity along its way.

When he felt the hardness in him move, affirming the connection that Khan’s mind had deemed worthy to sacrifice his dignity for, he bucked into it and instantly fingernails left a stinging imprint in his flesh.

“Damn, you’re pushy!” Kirk swore. Khan closed his eyes in delight when hard shoves rocked his body – unrestrained at last! He met the thrusts with the same vigor until suddenly Kirk uttered a strangled moan and pulled out. Warmth spread on Khan’s back and he violently clenched his teeth to suppress the bitterness at the way Kirk had chosen to climax.

“You greedy bastard!” Kirk panted. “I’ll show you what it means to chase me to the finish!”

The hand that had briefly disappeared was back again and its touch almost felt as if it wanted to massage the fluids on his back into the skin. It quickly let go, though, and instead, slick with his ejaculate, it took his rapidly hardening penis in an iron grip whereas the fingers of the other one resumed their previous task and worked their way inside of him.

Khan gasped for air when he felt the ruthless pressure on his prostate attack his senses so vehemently that he had to actively remember to breathe.

“Quite an impressing refractory period,” he heard Kirk say. “Let’s see if you can also speed up the rest.”

Kirk didn’t give him the shortest break, not a second to gather his senses, nothing. Khan’s mind reeled when the dexterous fingers’ stimulation fired up every synapse that could be remotely linked to arousal. Futilely trying to cope with the massive onslaught of excitement, he was unceremoniously hauled toward completion just like the first time, but then the rush suddenly ended.

Everything was switched to slow motion, and Kirk reduced speed and pressure, almost cajoling him to jump over the edge himself. Khan closed his eyes and let himself be carried away. Formerly fatal electric sparks were becoming tender vibrations until one last brush ignited the all-consuming fire. Helplessly he jerked into the slick hand, the spurts Kirk was milking from him putting him out of his excellent misery at last.

Gently the fingers slipped out of him. Khan rolled on his back, not caring for the hard ground or the complacent look on Kirk’s face.

“You can mock me all you like, but there are some things I know my way around,” Kirk said.

His breathing returning to normal again, Khan took Kirk in. _You’re prone to understatement. Surprising,_ he thought to himself, but refrained from saying it out loud. Instead he returned Kirk’s smile and it managed to infect him with a fraction of the giddiness Kirk exuded like a birthday boy facing his cake.

“I think we should clean ourselves again,” Khan remarked. He wouldn’t give in to the urge to reach out and pull the warm body nearer, and fortunately his words awakened an immediate enthusiasm in Kirk. In no time, he was on his feet, flashing him a challenging grin.

“Liven up, old geezer, or they’ll chew off your ass.”

He turned to go, his backside eliciting all kinds of impossible scenarios in Khan’s mind, but although his augmented body denied him yet another erection, he couldn’t merely stay behind and watch.

“Beware, you sniveling simp!” Khan jumped up and clutched Kirk, more throwing than dragging him the remaining meter to the pond, and the moment Kirk landed in the water, Khan dove in too. He embraced Kirk and indulged in some seconds of weightless drifting during which even the increasing number of bites couldn’t prompt Khan to let go. Struggling free, Kirk managed to resurface at last.

“I’ll show you who–!” Mid-sentence, Kirk started to hectically search his skin. “Ouch, damn it!”

Jumping up and down while ripping off some of the creatures, Kirk didn’t look as if he’d immediately resume his attack, so Khan circled him to keep moving.

“What an exceptional example of courage,” he mocked playfully. “Surrounded by alien forces, but never prepared to give up.”

“You–!”

Khan allowed Kirk to pull him under, topple him and dunk him again after they had resurfaced. Only when he felt Kirk’s skin turn cold did he hurry out of the water, sure that he would be followed. On the way to the edge Khan already plucked off some of the fish off Kirk’s back.

“Thanks, now let me.” At the beginning, Kirk’s cold hands lingered just marginally longer than normal, but after a while they didn’t try to hide any more what they were doing. Gliding over shoulders and down the chest, a detour along pectorals on an unsuccessful search for the creatures, they were all too keen to catalogue more of Khan’s body.

Before his mind got clouded by the soft caresses, Khan cleared his throat to focus again. “It’s chilly down here. You should dress,” he told Kirk, who shrugged and knelt down to switch off the tricorder.

“But with my uniform all wet, we should think of a different way to get me warm again,” he answered.

Khan remained where he was, staring at the spot in total darkness where he knew Kirk was waiting. There was nothing out of the ordinary, right?  _He’s cold, it’s just like when we’re outside,_  he convinced himself when he lay down and pulled Kirk closer.

 

***

Still tugging at his wakefulness, Khan reckoned that his successful self-delusion provided him with an excuse to stay pressed against Kirk’s now warm backside in the early morning. He closed his eyes again, enjoying the arousing and soothing routine.

Gradually, Kirk’s heartbeat accelerated and he turned around, his erection bumping into Khan’s to automatically set off a program of subtly grinding hips.

“Wait, I wanna see you.” Kirk leaned away to grope around for the tricorder. “You’re ready for a tumble in the hay? Or rather on the rocks. Wow, that sounds like a great name for a cocktail.”

The tricorder lit up and Khan tried to make sense of the view. Kirk was his perky self again, smiling at him expectantly and unbidden, the question he had asked himself earlier returned.

How would it be? Perceiving the world through Kirk’s eyes – to be playful and without any care. _To be human._

He felt his lips pinch and tension spread to every fiber of his body. He would never understand and even if he tried, there was no use in it after all.

“We’ll reach the station soon,” Khan said. This was all that mattered, but he doubted that Kirk saw the implications in it.

There was a reason why after Kirk’s flight, they had given a wide berth of anything that touched the future, Khan thought bitterly. In the end, all of this wouldn’t lead anywhere.

Kirk hesitated in his movement. “Yeah, I know, but what has that–”

“We should stop this, it’s a waste of energy.” Tearing his eyes away before he could see the other man’s reaction, Khan got up and dressed. He was aware of Kirk’s look on him, but he didn’t acknowledge his presence – not even when they left for the other cave to eat and refill the canister.

Silently they sat down by the water and Khan submerged his arm. He heard Kirk breathe in before he reached out to pluck off their food, and only then did Khan look up again, answering the questioning gaze with a hard stare to cut off whatever Kirk seemed to be on the verge of saying. He tore off the animals himself and pressed them in Kirk’s hand, all but running out of the cave afterward. Ripping off the rest of the fish with his teeth, he cursed his lack of self-control.

Outside, the first rays of the sun were peeking over the horizon. There was a plain stretching out before him which would take hours to cross, so he should hurry.

“Khan, wait!”

Hearing his name from Kirk’s mouth brought back memories of the almost fatal incident in the cave, but Khan didn’t bother with the odd feeling this left him with. He tuned out the steps behind him as much as he could and marched on, the hills his only focus at the end of the almost completely empty desert. The station wouldn’t be far. And once they reached it, the madness they had got caught up in would stop.

As the hours wore on, a slight breeze started to provide some relief from the increasingly hot sun. It would accelerate Kirk’s fluid loss, though, but that wasn’t important, Khan assured himself. Just as unimportant as the fact that Kirk was lagging behind, the shuffling through the sand becoming more and more quiet.

 _He has the canister with the water. He’ll survive,_ Khan told himself.

“Shit, Khan! Slow down a little, will you?” he heard from a distance.

Quickening his steps, Khan headed for the foot of the hill when the sounds following him suddenly stopped.

 _He needs to rest, I don’t, so I should continue walking,_ Khan thought to himself. He ignored the overhanging rock on his side and began to ascend the hill, silence surrounding him like thick mud. It dulled his senses and made his legs weary, forcing him to a standstill after only a few meters.

It almost felt as if his body had developed a mind of its own, keen on staying near to Kirk, and he couldn’t stop it from walking back to where he expected to find him. Khan plunked down in the sand, making full use of the spur’s large shadow by choosing the spot farthest away from Kirk. Sullenly, he fixed his eyes on the plain he had just crossed.

“Want some water?”

Khan shook his head and heard Kirk open the container.

“Damn this planet,” he groaned after drinking. “Something’s surely going to drive me nuts, first of all this frigging heat.”

Khan closed his eyes, forcing his reactions under his control. He was not going to engage in a conversation and most of all he would refrain from monitoring Kirk's state of health. Without any success, Khan tried to plan ahead in case they would already reach the station that day, but no matter how much he tried to picture their destination, there was a mental block that probibited any thought beyond the present.

“I guess what’s also confounding me a bit is the fact that we’ve been _fucking_ ,” Kirk continued all of a sudden. “But that might be a mere trifle depending on the perspective.”

The accusation resonating in the last sentence was Khan’s clue to stand up and leave the shadow of the rock. There would be no communication. He could keep Kirk out of his head. And he could clear his mind of the superfluous thoughts that wanted to flood it.

_I can do that. I’m not human._

“Shit,” he heard Kirk swear, but Khan started to climb the hill in long strides. With the sun still high in the sky, Kirk wouldn’t be able to dog him – at least at this speed.

Yet just like before, Khan’s feet were heavy like lead and refused to cooperate with him in the long run. In what felt like excruciating slowness, Khan went up the little geographical elevation, always aware of the crunching gravel in a short distance. Kirk was there, trying to catch up with him, and at the peak, he had finally succeeded.  

“So as an Augment …” Khan heard him gasping, but he didn’t turn around, “… you’re superior in many ways, right?”

Almost feeling Kirk’s breath on his nape, Khan nevertheless continued on his path. He should accelerate his advance, but he couldn’t convince his body to obey him until it was finally too late.

“And you’re so very clever, aren’t you?” Panting heavily, Kirk overtook him to drop the medical kit and the container with water on the ground and simply stand in Khan’s way, ignoring the dark glance Khan darted at him. “Then explain to me: What the hell did we do last night?”

Khan ordered his legs to march on and his feet shuffled forward in a futile attempt to resume their path. But what sense did it make to continue? Whatever he did to avoid a confrontation, Kirk wouldn’t allow for it. Clutching his collar, grabbing his arm – Kirk would do something to make him stay.

 _To start a fight and risk weakening Kirk again isn’t a real option,_ Khan conceded inwardly. Yet the longer Kirk just stood directly in front of him, _looking_ , the more restless Khan became.

“Tell me. What was that about?” Kirk asked quietly.

“You know what we did.”

“And what the fuck does that _mean_?”

“I don’t know.” Khan frowned at his own words. Uttering the likes of them had become an unsettling habit lately. “And it’s of no importance. As there aren’t many sexual partners to choose from, we decided not to be too picky. We should leave it at that.”

“Are you serious?” He was hurt. The brows knitted in disbelief, eyes holding Khan’s piercing gaze unflinchingly, he couldn’t hide the disappointment that seemed to make the blue of his irises even brighter. If he had been one of his contemporaries, Khan would have thought that such eyes could only be those of an Augment – they were unreal in their hue. Everything about them, down to the thickness of the lashes, was much too perfect to be natural.

 _Curious_ , Khan thought to himself. All those days of walking, those eyes had studied him, had questioned or had shown fear, but not once had Khan seen hatred in them.

The look chipped away at Khan’s painstakingly maintained resentment, making way for a tentative hope that vanished as quickly as it had emerged. Of course Kirk had been unable to feel contempt! And there could be just one reason.

“If this explanation doesn’t satisfy you, we could resort to the most obvious one,” Khan sneered, scrunching his nose in all the disgust he could muster. He wouldn’t show the sadness weighing him down. “It wasn’t our rational decision all along. It was just the blood.”

“What?” Kirk stepped forward. “You said that the components had been broken down long ago!”

Khan inhaled, forcing his clenching jaw to move. “Now use that miniscule brain of yours for a change and think about the previous days,” he spat. “What did you eat? And where did it come from?”

“I had the same as you!” Kirk shouted. “Those stupid insects and the fish we caught …” he paused, “ _you_ caught in the caves.”

He compressed his lips, throwing Khan a defiant look. “So what? I ingested tiny amounts of your blood all those days, but that can’t be the reason.”

“Of course it is, and wouldn’t it be a perfectly convenient explanation?” Khan asked more snidely than he had planned.

Shaking his head, Kirk stood his ground. “No,” he declared with conviction. “You’re wrong. Super-human or not, you’re wrong in this. Even _I_ can see that clear as day, so there must be something about it.” He smiled. “Now let’s return to my initial question: What does it mean?”

Unable to come to a sensible conclusion, Khan let his imagination be captured by the lips that had formed the words. Slightly parted, they looked so inviting that Khan fought a brief urge to raise his hand and feel their soft texture.

“I don’t know,” he breathed, but before he could avert his eyes, Kirk took another step to reduce the distance between them to almost nothing. Bewildered, Khan looked up, processed a still ongoing slow advance, and he briefly considered retreating when suddenly, the remaining gap was bridged. The scratchy tickling of Kirk’s stubble welcomed him, only to be replaced by incredible softness in an instant.

Distracted by the arousing contrast, Khan just peripherally realized Kirk’s hand clutching his nape, but instead of exerting pressure it rather made sure that Khan didn’t draw back.

Immobile and unsure what to do, Khan felt the subtle movement of Kirk’s lips captivating him. In an attempt to center himself, he closed his eyes, but his breath caught regardless when carefully, as if they had to ask for permission, Kirk let the tender nipping of the lips become more urgent.

 _A kiss ..._ he couldn’t even remember how it had felt the few times he had allowed one to happen.

A quiet moan, almost impossible to hear, incited Khan’s arms to snake around Kirk of their own accord. He answered the now gentle probing of the tongue, drawing Kirk nearer and waiting for the mouths to work out an understanding.

Without further prompting they did just that, and the hands followed suit. Feeling the fabric immediately brought back the sensation of the wet skin he had touched mere hours ago. A more forceful meeting of the tongues, fingers that managed to slip under the rim of the top, and Khan was transported to the purposeful play in the cave, only this time the rush was outpaced by a greater need than simply to touch.

Frantically Khan sought more contact, invited Kirk’s tongue to explore his mouth and leaned into Kirk’s hand that was combing through his hair. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more – most of all a tighter embrace, the force of which made Kirk stagger backward until he hit a rock.

“Sorry,” Khan mumbled, but was silenced by Kirk’s mouth. The hand on the back of his head now pushed in earnest and the duel of the tongues made speech impossible, as well as breathing. Kirk didn’t relent, though, met Khan’s insistence with the same energy and when Khan started to rub their growing erections against each other, he finally gasped for air.

“What’re we doing?” Kirk panted and Khan’s eyes snapped open. He paused, trying to reestablish a connection to the rest of his body, but there was just Kirk’s heartbeat, the rapid breathing against his chest, and the warmth that even seemed to exceed the heat around them.

The strong fingers on his nape worked against Khan’s intention to turn his head, but with Kirk so near, Khan found himself unable to form a coherent thought. So he faced away, first studying the ground and when the usual colorless view didn’t catch his eyes, they strayed to the horizon.

 _What indeed?_ he asked himself the moment he saw it, its dark structure clearly standing out against the light sand and the grey rocks.

Abruptly, he disengaged himself from Kirk. “There’s the station. So we walk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, snogandagrope, for betaing this chapter although it's basically devoid of plot :)


	9. Chapter 9

Leaning against the heat absorbing panels of the building, Khan stared at the distant dot that was slowly becoming bigger. This nondescript something was all he allowed his mind to process. In the previous hours the spot had looked as if it had stood still, but now it was finally starting to resemble the man it was.

Kirk was approaching the station and briefly Khan had considered meeting him half way before he decided against it in the end. Annoyed, he cursed his negligence. Instead of just leaving Kirk, he should have anticipated that the station would be secured somehow and that he needed the tricorder. Unable to open it without an impulse of energy, Khan had been compelled to wait until the the tool arrived.

Arms, legs – the outline of the body was now becoming more pronounced, and Kirk seemed to speed up his pace. Half staggering, half running, he headed for the station. Khan cast down his eyes to watch a shadow at his foot. It should reach the small rock to his right before Kirk arrived, but it wasn’t even close to touching it when Khan already heard Kirk’s noisy breathing. He raised his head.

“You fucker!” Kirk shouted, but then paused to catch his breath. “It surely wasn’t that bad! No need to run across half of the planet afterward.”

Khan frowned whilst Kirk held his sides.

“Okay, I get it, you don’t talk about it. Alright,” he wheezed. “Now why haven’t you opened that door already?”

Khan stood up.

“I need the tricorder,” he said. Kirk opened the medical kit and extracted the tricorder to hand it over, and Khan ripped the display off. He connected the device to the switch in the wall and after giving a jolt, the slide door stuttered open.

Kirk immediately squeezed through the crack.

“Ugh, it _is_ Klingon.”

Inching inside the building, Khan saw what Kirk had meant. Although the labels on the door opener had already shown that the station was Klingon, its crammed and forbidding interior made it abundantly clear. Khan tried to activate some of the instruments, but there was no response. Frustrated, he assembled the tricorder again.

“There’s no energy,” Kirk remarked.

Khan grunted. “You think?”

“Well, then do something about it.”

Khan tore off the metal cover of a weapon safe and found the box empty. “Getting the reactor started will be a complex task,” he said and turned toward Kirk, who was looking at him expectantly before he shrugged.

“You’re the expert here. I’m not the one who recently took residence in the Klingon Empire.”

The heedless comment transported Khan back to reality in ways he had not experienced in the previous days, and going by Kirk’s almost imperceptible flinch after his utterance, Khan was sure that he had felt the same. Ignoring the sudden awkwardness with some effort, Khan faced the wall again and deciphered the signs plastering it.

“The station has an emergency energy source in the form of solar panels, but they’re folded and locked. This here should change the latter.” Khan pulled a lever. “You stay inside while I unfold them.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kirk sink on the floor with a grateful exhale. Khan left the station and climbed on the roof where the sweltering heat had turned the handles into what felt like incandescent metal. Gritting his teeth when the biting turned to burning and cauterized his flesh, Khan adjusted the panels as quickly as he could.

“And what are we doing now?” he heard Kirk ask the moment he came back into the control room.

“You search water, I repair the food synthesizer,” Khan ground out. He glowered at Kirk who gave him a cross look in return.

“It wasn’t the fish, you idiot,” Kirk mumbled when he stood up. Vanishing into one of the adjoining rooms, he left Khan alone with the images that insisted on surfacing constantly.

 _It was insignificant,_ Khan affirmed himself, but the memories just wouldn’t let go, not since that–

“Got it!” Kirk shouted. “They have a well! I’ll climb down, so if you don’t hear of me soon, you might try some angling!”

“Moron,” Khan said quietly, huffing out a small laugh. He set to work and directed the emergency energy to the food synthesizers, and the control lights of the machine were finally flickering faintly when loud clanking approached.

“Look what I found: Klingon china.” Carrying a bucket and two metal mugs, Kirk entered the room. He put the bucket on the floor and dunked the mugs into the water, giving one of it to Khan. “Bottoms up!” he said, grinning.

“Cheers.” Khan indulged Kirk’s clinking of mugs.

“Synthesizer working again?” Kirk asked after taking a sip.

Khan emptied the mug in one go. “I expect it to, yes.”

He pressed a combination of commands and after some whirring, a dark lump appeared on the tray. When it had materialized completely, the lights went out.

“What’s that?” Kirk asked.

Khan shrugged. “It won’t be poisonous, that’s all that matters.”

He took the tray and was on the verge of breaking off a part of the mass, when Kirk suddenly came to life.

“Wait!” he commanded and jogged back into the adjoining room. “Found a couple of these on my search for the bucket.”

He wielded a sizeable knife at Khan who took an involuntary step to the side.

“Wow, hold your horses, I just want to make our meal a bit more cultured.” With some exaggerated flourish, Kirk cut the food in half and then handed Khan his piece.

“My treat.”

Simultaneously, they bit into the mass, but at the first contact with its taste a pronounced urge to gag gripped Khan.

“Good god, what is that?” Kirk sputtered. “Congealed blood?”

Khan forced down the bite and took another one. “Not far off the truth, I’m afraid. I would add ‘unseasoned’.”

By chewing as little as possible and washing it down with much water, they managed to eat the rest of the unappetizing food.

“Hell, who would’ve thought that I’d miss the crawlies so soon,” Kirk said and leaned against the wall. “Because _that_ was truly revolting.”

“But it served its purpose.”

Kirk inclined his head. “Did it?” he asked. “So you’re feeling better now?” A suggestively raised eyebrow underlined the already obvious subtext.

“Stop it,” Khan growled, but Kirk continued to fix him with his gaze. Averting his eyes, Khan cursed Kirk’s readiness to torment him with innuendos. A possible continuation of the blood’s effect might not have been an entirely sound explanation, yet Kirk’s taunting also wasn’t helping.

“Coward,” Kirk murmured before he yawned violently.

“I suggest we try to activate the main energy. Hope your Klingon’s not too rusty,” Khan said. He steered toward the instrument that he had identified as the reactor’s control.

“Well, you’ve got the right man for that. Natural language prodigy.”

Surprised, Khan turned around. “Are you?”

“Nah, not one bit.” Kirk rested his head on the wall. “But I’m sure I can help with the reactor. They taught me stuff at the academy.” He managed a weak grin, but Khan could see that he was almost falling asleep.

“Tomorrow will be early enough to fix this problem. We’ll have more light then and after some sleep, you might even be useful,” he told Kirk. Diverting energy to a display briefly announced the whereabouts of the reactor to Khan and confirmed his suspicion that the task was too complex for Kirk’s current state of wakefulness.

“Thank god,” Kirk groaned and aimed for the dormitory Khan had just glimpsed at before. The bunk beds rather looked like stretchers, yet after Kirk had sprawled out on one of them, he sighed in relief. “Pretty uncomfortable, but in contrast to the rocks, it feels like heaven.”

Khan chose a bed at the opposite end of the room and laid down on the tautly spread out leather. “Weakling.” The tricorder was switched off to Kirk’s laugh.

“Yeah, sure. Be my pillow then, will you?”

“I told you to stop that,” Khan grumbled.

“And I heard you.”

Forcing the involuntary smile from his face, Khan listened to the restless shuffling. This obviously wasn’t the end of what Kirk had to say.

“So, if we manage to activate the reactor …” Kirk started cautiously.

“We won’t send a signal,” Khan interjected.

“But–”

“We’re on a Klingon outpost.” Khan couldn’t believe the boundless naivety.  ”Now who do you think would receive our signal first?”

“I guess the Klingons, but at least we’d–”

“I said no!” Khan cut him short. “They would take us prisoners and I guess you have at least a vague idea of what that means.”

Silence pervaded the small room.

“Yeah, but–”

“Sleep, Kirk,” Khan silenced him gruffly.

“Ass.”

Yet the expletive lacked the fervor of the previous days and after some time, Kirk became still.

“And you could call me Jim,” Khan heard before Kirk’s breathing finally turned regular.

 _No, I couldn’t,_ Khan thought. He considered leaving the dormitory and only the mental image of the loneliness that had made life after his revival more unbearable than anything else kept him back. There was just one way out: He needed his crew, yet the realization that he had not given them any thought for days made his guilty conscience soar.

Desperately he tried to surround himself with memories of the people that really mattered and clutched at their images which were buried somewhere deep. Despite his efforts, though, the last thought entering his mind when sleep wrapped him up was that of the man lying two meters away in the same room.

 

****

 _It was a figment of my mind,_ Khan decided the next morning. It must have been, because it was Kirk’s voice that roused him from his sleep, together with a flash of bright light.

“Found a window,” Kirk announced. A noise and then the room got even brighter. “And another one.”

Khan listened to Kirk bustling about in the control room.

“Hey, look at that, I made us breakfast,” Kirk called. “But today you fetch the water!”

Without giving it a second thought, Khan got out of bed and grabbed the bucket on his way to the well. Not even Kirk’s confident grin he saw in passing irritated him, although when he stepped up the ladder, it crossed Khan’s mind that he had just conformed to Kirk’s orders.

“It’s time for this to come to an end,” he told himself in a low voice when heaving the bucket over the well’s rim.

“Did you see the pipes?” Kirk shouted.

“Yes. So what looks like a tap might function again when we’ve got more energy.” Khan entered the main room and let the bucket plunk down on the floor.

“Yeah, well, that reactor, where is it actually?” Kirk asked, handing Khan a piece of the food.

“Through that door.”

Kirk went to the massive metal sheet Khan was pointing at. “That’s a door? Thought it was some reinforced part of the wall.” He knocked at it and then threw Khan a challenging look. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, pull it open? I saw you take out a whole shipload of Klingons after all.”

“Don’t be stupid, Kirk,” Khan scoffed. “What do superior reflexes have to do with a gigantic chunk of metal?”

Kirk made a face. “Can’t outwit that, can you? And by the way, in case you didn’t hear me, people usually call me Jim. You could try that for once.”

Busying himself with the task of directing energy to the display that had shown him the details of the reactor, Khan considered paying the renewed request no heed. “What good would that do?” he asked eventually.

“Nothing, I would just like it.”

For a second, the layout of the station lit up, before the light died down again. Khan stepped to the side to unscrew a cover on the wall, and the opening behind it really turned out to be the pipe he had seen on the display.

“Stop with that babble and fetch the tricorder,” Khan demanded. Upon Kirk’s return, he pointed at the narrow tube. “Get in there.”

Flabbergasted, Kirk stared at the opening that was barely as wide as his shoulders. “Why?”

“There’s a conduit we could manually connect to the solar panel’s energy.”

Kirk looked torn. “And why me?”

“Because I can pull you out again when you get stuck. Or cut a hole in it somewhere.”

Sighing exaggeratedly, Kirk nodded. He squeezed inside, tricorder lighting his way, and Khan pushed his feet because he doubted that there was enough room to crawl.

“Damn, it’s dirty in here.”

“Can you see the conduits?”

“Yeah, but they’re cased in some pretty heavy jacket I can’t get off. Now pull me out already!”

Khan reached inside the tube and clutched Kirk’s feet, unceremoniously hauling him outside. Frowning, Kirk peered down at himself.

“If you planned to use me as a pipe cleaner, it didn’t work,” he said and wiped his hands on his trousers. “There’s plenty more where this came from.”

“Stop whining.” Khan took the knife lying next to the food tray and thrust it into the tube. “Now give me a shove.”

He ignored Kirk’s wink. “No problem at all.”

The tube was really as grimy as Kirk had said. His hair in his eyes and the air around him getting stale and hot, Khan chipped off tiny bits of the jacket. Its material was so sturdy that he could only advance at agonizing slowness.

“Khan?” he heard Kirk’s muffled voice.

“Yes?”

“I’ll go and wash my face, okay? I think I accidentally ate Klingon grease inside that tube. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Khan attacked the jacket with renewed vehemence. “Whatever. This might take a while anyway,” he gasped. In an attempt to improve his technique, he resorted to scraping off wafer-thin layers of the jacket and quicker than he had anticipated something shiny became visible among the grey material.

“Kirk, are you there?” he shouted.

“Yeah, what do you want me to do?”

“I need you to redirect the energy to the door while I give the conduit a boost with the tricorder. It’s the symbol with the–”

“It’s okay, I saw what you did before. Just tell me when.”

Khan tore off the tricorder’s display and the moment he rerouted the energy, the light went out. Fumbling with the contacts in almost total darkness, he nevertheless managed to establish the connection to the conduit at last.

“Now!” Khan commanded and activated the tricorder. He heard a crunching sound before everything fell silent again.

“Door’s open … a hand’s breadth,” Kirk shouted. “And the emergency energy seems to be depleted again.”

“Damn it!” Khan swore. With some effort, he writhed his way out of the tube.

“I think I need your help here.”

Khan whipped around. Pushing on the door with all of his strength, Kirk was a rather ridiculous sight, but Khan joined him, using his back as leverage instead of his hands.

“Go!” he commanded, and to his surprise, the slide door really moved for about a centimeter before getting stuck again.

“We’re not such a bad … _team_ ,” Kirk pressed out. “Shit, could I … take a break?”

Panting heavily, Kirk leaned on Khan’s shoulder. The metal door blade had left a painful imprint in his back, but Khan found it difficult to step to the side. Kirk’s sweaty smell rooted him to the spot somehow. Unwittingly, he inhaled the heady aroma.

“Okay, I guess we could have another go.”

Khan roused himself from his state of distraction and after what must have been minutes of uninterrupted pushing, the crack in the door was finally wide enough for one person to squeeze through.

“Oh fuck!” Kirk sank to his knees, breathing heavily. Thankful to reduce the pressure on his back, Khan slid to the floor as well.

“Good thing … about this is that we’ll have warm water when the reactor’s fixed.” Kirk paused to gasp for air. “Care to join me for another bath?”

Khan stared at the floor. Once Kirk set his mind on something, he really followed it through. Almost admirable, Khan thought to himself, if it hadn’t been so amazingly naïve. “I know what you’re trying, but it won’t work.”

“Come on.” Kirk breathed in deeply. “You were the one who said it was just sex. And I happen to like sex.”

Khan suppressed the anger bubbling up at Kirk’s words. “I told you that this needs to stop immediately,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know what illusions you’re harboring, but none of this is real. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Why? It’s perfectly natural.”

“ _We_ don’t make sense,” Khan stated furiously and Kirk started to laugh.

“Of course not. And you know what? I don’t give a damn.”

Khan looked up.

 _It’s true. He really doesn’t care_. Gazing at the face that radiated nothing but hopeful determination, Khan suddenly couldn’t remember what the argument had been about. Just one thing caught his eye.

“You shaved.”

Kirk grinned self-consciously.

“More or less. Fucking sharp those Klingon knives.”

The smooth skin like a siren’s call to his fingers, they reached out to touch it. A small cut on the left cheek drew his hand nearer and he lightly trailed over the already healed wound.

“Got you,” he heard and instinctively jerked back. His eyes locked with Kirk’s and the blue that had mesmerized him before held his gaze once more.

“You know it’s not the blood,” Kirk said calmly.

 _Even so, this doesn’t mean that it should happen,_ Khan thought to himself, but remained silent, because it _was_ happening, right then, with Kirk bending forward, placing a tentative kiss on Khan’s lips. And there was nothing Khan could do but answer it and get lost in the soft touch. An instant later, a heavy weight was already pressing him down, and Kirk, who had pounced on him without Khan realizing it, only broke the kiss to take off his shirt.

Khan blinked. How could Kirk disarm him with just a look and some naked skin?

“You’ll soon regret not having taken me up on that bath.”

Answering Kirk’s smile felt perplexingly natural, the following wild look of boundless lust on the now smooth face was new, though. Kirk swooped down, the hard kiss sending Khan’s head into the metal door.

“Get that off!” Kirk mumbled against Khan’s mouth, pulling at his shirt. Complying frantically, Khan nearly ripped it off to have his hands free again. He let one of it wander down Kirk’s back and the other encircle his nape. Muscles worked under the skin and Khan listed them, mentally cataloguing the frail strength he encountered.

 _How vulnerable._ He stopped the kiss and concentrated on really feeling Kirk for the first time. Arms that supported the broad shoulders, the flimsy chest hair scattered all over the pectorals – every detail needed to be explored.

 _Imperfection. An accident, phaser fire, a fall like in the cave – this body is too delicate to withstand any of it._ Khan brushed past a nipple, causing Kirk to shiver. _But it’s more alive than anyone I’ve ever touched,_ he noted in amazement.

“You see what I mean? It doesn’t matter what you call it,” Kirk rasped. “I just know that I want it.”

Initiating a kiss rather than answering, Khan savored the tongues’ intense stimulation. _Want … nothing but raw need drives this._ The thought briefly crossed Khan’s mind, throwing him off course for a moment, but it seemed that his hands knew better what to do as they snaked around Kirk’s hips and pulled him nearer. Instantly, Khan’s mind blanked out everything save the sensations his crotch sent forth.

“God, this is killing me.” Contrasting his words, Kirk strained against him a bit more, rubbing his hardness against Khan’s. “We’ve got to get out of these trousers.”

Underlining the urgency with another greedy kiss, Kirk appeared to rely on Khan to take action, and automatically Khan fumbled for the waistbands. But Kirk wouldn’t budge, didn’t allow for the tiniest increase in the distance between them, so Khan pulled down their trousers as much as he could, his mind singularly focused on getting a hold of their cocks. When he managed to free them at least partly, he immediately gripped them and set a punishing pace.

Kirk’s breathing became even more pronounced.

“Yes, just like that, go on, please go on ...” he rambled.

“Don’t rush,” Khan whispered. This time he would draw it out, no matter how brutally Kirk pressed into him and how badly everything in him wanted to follow Kirk toward the climax he felt already building. This time he would ... Khan halted his movement. There had been a noise – from outside the station.

“Kirk, stop.” Suddenly wide awake, Khan pushed the weight on him away, yet his force had not reckoned with Kirk’s fierce resistance.

“Don’t you–!” he began, clutching Khan.

“Get off of me!” Khan employed all of his strength and it sent Kirk flying through half of the room. He crashed into the console in the middle of it and the wind was knocked out of him.

 _Water canister, knife._ Quickly, Khan dressed and grabbed the items. He ran to the front door and opened it to peek through the crack.

It was Starfleet. Just a small shuttle, but still.

“What’s going on? Wow, a ship.” Khan heard from behind his back. Kirk had obviously managed to get up again. “We’re safe.”

“Safe, of course,” Khan scoffed. “ _You’re_ safe. But they won’t find me so quickly in the caves and once they do, they have to get me out first.”

The shuttle raised a lot of dust when it landed – this would be the perfect opportunity to leave.

“Don’t go.” He felt fingers on his arm, holding on to the fabric of the shirt.

Khan turned around and freed himself with a jerk. “I told you that they won’t get me alive.”

“And nothing has changed?” Kirk asked.

 _No. In the eyes of everyone else nothing has changed,_ Khan thought to himself. And although the hopelessness of their situation couldn’t be more blatant, Kirk obviously refused to see it. Still just in his trousers, Kirk looked at him with the same expectant expression he had worn so often.

Khan felt anger working its way through his body like a fiery injection. This was the end and Kirk continued to pretend that there was a choice. Khan snorted in disgust.

“Don’t do it, please,” Kirk simply said.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Khan seethed. “Seeing me locked away.”

“No,” Kirk answered without missing a beat. “I need to know you’re alive and I’ll make damn sure of that.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to snogandagrope who selflessly rifled through the giant heap of fic I dumped on her while she was away on a trip.


	10. Chapter 10

The panels again. Everywhere he went, there were the same wall panels, sometimes gray, light or dark, sometimes white – like those in front of his eyes.

Just once had he been so angry that he had taken his frustration out on them, and their sturdiness had surprised him. They had withstood his punch and not showed the tiniest dent, but those here – as they were part of an ordinary interrogation room – might not be so hard, Khan mused. Not that there was any reason to hit them now. Or a possibility, with the fortified handcuffs he was wearing.

Khan heard the door slide open and someone entered the room. A woman, he corrected himself.

“Mr. Singh.”

Khan continued to stare at the wall. Soles clicked on the floor and by the sound he assumed that she was wearing high heels, which was unusual for a Federation employee.

“Mr. Singh, my name is Ruth Legrange. You agreed to see me.” Her voice was rather deep and didn’t waver in the slightest. “I hope that includes talking as well. But in your time.”

She endured the ensuing silence surprisingly well. No shuffling of the feet, no nervous straightening of clothes, and so eventually Khan turned around to examine her. Quite at ease, she stood in the middle of the room, PADD in her hand, and looked at Khan with a mixture of professional interest and personal determination.

Khan compressed his lips. The bun, the rigid neck framed by a high collar – she wouldn’t accept to simply be sent away again, so much became clear from her stance.

“Krahl decided that it was advisable to comply with the Council’s wishes in this respect. If it hadn’t been for my lawyer, I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to see ... a psychologist.”

He wasn’t able to keep the disgust out of his voice, but she seemed to be completely unimpressed by it.

“Let’s start with recent events then,” she said. “How do you feel about the verdict?”

Khan sensed a frown forming. A week ago, the never-ending array of appearances in that much too big courtroom had been over. Seemingly out of nowhere, the jury had reached a decision at last.

How he had felt about it? He had felt nothing. Life – what did that even mean?

“What sense does it make to talk about it with you?” Khan scoffed. “You’ve got no idea what _life_ is for me. I’ll still be in that cell when your grandchildren forget to put flowers on your grave.”

She took a step forward, inclining hear head.

“Is it possible that the sentence handed down on you has made you more desperate than you’re prepared to admit?” she asked.

Khan paused and reviewed his words. He should be careful with what he was saying.

“Not to the extent that someone like you would become necessary because I’d slit my throat otherwise,” he said.

She took a note on her PADD.

“During your trial you didn’t utter a single word. Why?”

“It has something to do with the benefits of having a Vulcan lawyer. They don’t encourage idle talk,” Khan answered.

“And you didn’t think you had something to say?”

“Would that have made a difference?” Khan huffed out a laugh. “The whole affair was a politically motivated staging. With Marcus’s faction still strong, there was a call for me to be court-martialed, whereas moderate forces sought for an enquiry committee to expose all of Marcus’s schemes. In the end, they compromised on a non-public trial. I was just a puppet.”

“You don’t think the trial was about you and your crimes?”

“The doves wanted to make a fighter for peace of me, a misguided victim of militarism. Ridiculous.” Khan snorted. “The hawks would have liked to tear every piece of flesh from my bones. Maybe that would have been the better solution.”

After it had been clear that the Vulcan commander would survive, it had only been about politics, nothing else. It became so obvious in the course of the trial that the constant interference had sometimes even tested Krahl’s patience.

“Do you feel wronged by the procedures?”

“The trial held no meaning whatsoever for me,” Khan responded directly, wondering if she could tell that this was a lie. She seemed intelligent enough. So he looked her straight in the eye and endured her searching gaze.

“Because you reject our entire species as irrelevant?” she challenged him, and Khan exhaled. She wasn’t that perceptive after all. Because something during the trial had been important. At least at the beginning.

The first month he had sat in that bench, waiting – for _him_ to appear.

But he had never been there, despite the central role he had played in the whole matter. In the end, Kirk’s presence had been reduced to a witness report. Just a file in the jury’s data.

“You’re weak,” Khan said instead. “And that’s the very reason why Marcus woke me up. You’re helpless, struggling to find your place in the universe, but your means are too limited.”

“You got a fair trial. Isn’t that quite remarkable for the species that suffered such great losses at your hands?”

Khan couldn’t help letting out a guffaw. “Tell that to the prison guard who shot me during my first week here.”

“What happened?” she asked and typed on her PADD.

“He made me trip, shouted I wanted to flee, and then I found out that the phasers constantly pointing at me were on _kill_ ,” Khan explained more calmly than he felt.

“Yes.” Her eyes flitted over the display. “You were hospitalized for two days.”

“The guard’s brother had been in the London facility.”

Legrange looked up again.

“Well, an incident like that was bound to happen. You murdered hundreds of people. In the end, it’s a miracle that you were just sentenced to life in prison.”

 _Not a miracle,_ Khan thought to himself. He had been sure that they would put him in stasis again, but they didn’t. The moment the judge read out the verdict, he knew that Kirk’s testimony must have had something to do with it.

Back then, when Krahl had offered to let him read it, he had just stared at the PADD before he handed it back eventually. What could it possibly contain? Kirk hadn’t even come to the trial, so the document wouldn’t be very helpful either, would it?

Afterward, he had banished Kirk from his mind, and if it wasn’t for this woman, he would have continued to block every thought of him. 

“Or rather it was Captain Kirk’s testimony that helped you,” she confirmed Khan’s suspicion.

“I’ve never bothered with it.”

“Do you want to read it? I’ve got it here.”

She held out the PADD, but Khan just shook his head. It was too late for this. What sense was there in stirring up those memories again, now that the path ahead of him was clear? What difference did it make to think of the reason why he had let himself be trapped or endured this ludicrous trial?Feeling anger boiling up, Khan clenched his fists. That man had been his first mistake, but he would also be his last.

“We should conclude this conversation,” he ground out.

“Mr. Singh,” the psychologist said patiently. “I’m not the enemy. On the contrary, I’m actually here to help you. If you cooperate with me, it’s possible that the terms of your sentence will be altered, so you should see this as a chance to improve your situation.”

Khan calmed himself down. He didn’t care for his situation. Only one thing was still of importance.

“Where’s my crew?” He had not received any news of them apart from the information in court. They had survived, just like the Enterprise, but that was all he knew.

“You see, this was also a direct effect of your trial. Already a month ago, they were awakened and transferred to a class M exoplanet.”

“You’re lying,” Khan growled.

She looked offended. “I’m certainly not. The discussion about the wrongs committed in the whole affair led to an increased awareness with regard to how they should be treated. They’re not responsible for your deeds.”

Taking Khan’s silence as an invitation to proceed, Legrange inhaled, fixing him with her gaze.

“Now, Mr. Singh, you achieved what you wanted. You crew’s free. This society has proven to live up to higher standards than you did.”

Khan faced away. Typical human self-righteousness was nothing he was prepared to endure ever again.

“Then this _society_ has its peace now, hasn’t it?” he spat. “Goodbye, Ms. Legrange.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

The gruff answer made Khan whip around again.

“In contrast to what you think, we’re not content with the fact that you’re buried alive,” she said evenly. “We want you to pay society something back. To make amends. Can you do that?”

Khan studied her face, but there was nothing for him to read. She could be Vulcan for the lack of emotion. “Why should I _want_ to?”

“To avoid spending the rest of your life in an isolation cell,” she declared offhandedly.

“And what kind of penance could that possibly be?” Going by the clinical look she scrutinized him with, Khan wasn’t sure he wanted to know. There was something about her that rang awfully familiar, but he couldn’t point his finger at it.

“I’m not authorized to disclose this,” she said. “Yet, as you already stated, it’s supposed to be a form of penance and will entail no small amount of suffering. It’s up to you. Make your choice.”

And in a Federation interrogation room of all places. “Isn’t this the moment when you should tell me that I’ve got nothing to lose?” Khan asked wryly.

The corners of her mouth moved, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m not here to play games. You either decide now and join the men waiting outside this room, or you return to your cell. Forever.”

Khan turned his head, facing the wall once more, but already the first glimpse at the paneling called up the black emptiness that had encompassed him in his cell.

“Send them in,” he said curtly, taking a step toward the exit.

Now her face showed clear satisfaction. Khan didn’t like the expression at all – the professional distance gone to be replaced by a shark-like grin – and when he saw the four hulking men coming through the door, he knew he was right to be alarmed. This had nothing to do with the Council.

_This is Starfleet._

The way the guards pushed him along the corridors and chained him to a bench in the shuttle like cattle made him question his decision, but only when they reached a small building in the middle of a desert did uneasiness spread in him.

This was undoubtedly the entrance to an underground military facility, similar to the ones he had seen when he was still under Marcus’s control. The man who left the building, all white coat and tight smile, did nothing to alleviate Khan’s worries.  

“Mr. Singh, I’m glad you see you. Ms. Legrange has informed me of your voluntary cooperation. Follow me.”

They took the elevator and going by the amount of floors they went down, the structure below the surface had to be vast. At some point, the cage stopped and then they marched along seemingly endless corridors until finally, the man who had received him opened one of the doors.

Inside the room, Khan was briefly taken aback by the fact that it almost looked exactly like the interrogation room he had been in. Nondescript and garishly white.

“Now the first thing I have to do is to administer this hypospray. Don’t worry, you won’t feel anything,” he heard, but before he could turn around, he felt pressure on his throat and then the world went black.

 

****

Noises, slowly forming words. And light. Too much of it, shining through still closed eyelids, dazzling him. 

“Dr. Barnes, I think he’s regaining consciousness.”

Khan forced his eyes open and saw a man hovering over him. Barnes, obviously the name of the white coat from before, was tracing along Khan’s entire body with a tricorder. When he had finished, he seemed relieved. Too relieved.

Looking at the anxious lines on the man’s forehead, Khan wondered what had happened during the time he had been unconscious. He felt a bit like he had been woken up from cryo-sleep although his disorientation was not as pronounced. Yet the flimsy tunic he was wearing also pointed at a longer time-span. Automatically, Khan heaved himself up.

“Don’t overexert yourself,” Barnes said and Khan snorted.

“Clothes,” he ordered.

“In the cabinet. Wait, I’ll get them for you.” The female voice he had heard first had been a nurse who now stepped from the head end of the bed toward the wall. She touched a button and the doors floated open, revealing a selection of the same Starfleet attire Khan had grown to loathe over time, only now it was of a dark blue.

“I can help you,” the nurse said when she handed the clothes to Khan. He snatched them from her.

“That won’t be necessary.”

Feeling a surprising weakness as he let his legs glide from the bed, Khan decided to postpone the dressing. Something else besides the physical change was off, though, but only when Barnes and the nurse had left the room did he realize that he was not wearing handcuffs.

There were no restrictions of any kind, no straps on the bed, no force fields, nothing. In the course of the following days, the situation became even more surreal as he was allowed to move around the floor of the underground complex in relative freedom. Quickly he was recovering from whatever had affected his strength, but the limbo he was vegetating in – with scarce personnel ignoring him for most of the time and a doctor who never spoke more than two words – his existence was starting to resemble that of a ghost.

Fear, awe – people had always approached him cautiously. Now he was greeted with a friendly nod when he walked along the corridors as an exercise to establish complete command over his body again.

“Mr. Singh, you should sleep more.”

Khan was roused from the stupor the endless walking sometimes caught him up in. It was the nurse again, the woman who always seemed to be around somehow, but whose name he had never enquired.

“I don’t need to sleep.”

“Oh yes, you do. Well, I understand that you can’t move around enough down here to tire you, so you might want to try out a sleeping medication.” She dug in one of her pockets. “I brought you this tablet, so you can choose to take it or just discard it, if that’s your wish.”

Khan held out his hand. The blister packaging looked oddly out of time, but when the nurse turned on her heels, he peeled it off and swallowed the pill. Escaping this monotony sounded like a welcome idea.

Already on the threshold to his room, he felt his eyes droop. He sat down on his bed, his mind getting fuzzy. Instead of blanking out slowly, though, his thoughts remained in the steady motion they always were and on top of all, his heart started to accelerate.

Bewildered, Khan leaned on the head of the bed although his instincts screamed at him to do the opposite.

He had to flee! Escape the panic coursing through him, but he couldn’t move. Somewhere at the back of his mind, something was lurking, something terrible, but although he fought against it, he felt it approaching mercilessly in the wake of the sedative.

 _Pain. Blinding, unbearable pain._ It was a memory so intense that it almost suffocated him.

Desperately Khan tried to process the sensations whilst his mind continued to let images resurface that had nothing to do with anything he had ever experienced: People that were just a blur. A flurry of movement. Bright lights. And eclipsing everything was the excruciating pain that Khan was sure would kill him any second.

 _Not real,_ he affirmed himself. All of this was just a product of his imagination, and concentrating on his rattling breathing, Khan remained in a state of partial alertness – his limbs numb but his reason refusing to let go.

It felt like an eternity before the effect of the medication abated, but the desperation and anxiety stayed. Staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night, Khan didn’t allow himself to fall asleep.

 _Maybe they’d come for me again_ , his mind repeated over and over again, because it was clear that whoever they were, they had done something with him. Something that exceeded everything he had ever thought the Federation capable of. The fact that he had only been able to doze lightly in the previous days showed that his subconscious had been aware of what he would expect should he sleep. Somewhere deep down he had known that the memories of what he had endured would return.

In the early morning, Khan heard a knock and without waiting for a reply, one of the security officers he already knew from his arrival entered.

“You’re up, good. Come with me, please.”

Khan had managed not to flinch when the man knocked and he ordered himself to stay just as controlled during the short walk. Yet the moment he was led into an office, a white-haired Starfleet officer waiting for him, he was gripped by an irrational fear, rooting him to the spot.

“Mr. Singh, or should I call you Mr. Harrison?”

 _Admiral De Luca_ the name plate on the desk said, but Khan refused to be intimidated by the title. This was not Marcus. There was no reason to let the previous night’s nightmare and the dread of his dead enemy unsettle him. He should rely on his anger instead.

“Khan will do,” he said.

“Well then, _Mr. Singh_ ,” De Luca began, “let me get this straight. I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that if it had been up to me, you’d rot in some hell hole for all eternity.”

His eyes narrowed to slits, De Luca visibly fought for his composure for a fraction of second.

“Be that as it may,” he continued. “One thing is clear: You’ll never see freedom again.”

“I have never been free,” Khan scoffed, eliciting a malicious grin on the admiral’s face.

“That’s the spirit, Mr. Singh. It will save you a lot of trouble when you get used to your new situation.”

“Which is?”

De Luca walked around his desk, scrutinizing Khan like a commodity he was supposed to inspect.

“Have you not wondered what had been going on in those previous weeks?”

 _Weeks?_ He had just been here for a couple of days, hadn’t he?

“Now that you found out about the properties of my DNA, you wanted to have your merry way with it?” Although Khan had intended to give his retort a sarcastic undertone, it sounded accusatory nonetheless.

“Partly, it’s astonishing what your body is able to tolerate,” De Luca explained, unmoved. “But we also wanted to give you a little goodbye present to make sure you don’t step out of line.”

Khan’s mind reeled. This was Starfleet after all, yet after everything he had encountered until now, there was nothing he could rule out anymore.

“Implants,” he said through clenched teeth, and De Luca’s face lit up. “The incident when something nearly tore me apart was a failed experiment. But your engineers have mastered the technology in the end, it seems.”

“Clever boy.” The admiral’s delighted expression made Khan’s rage soar in ways he couldn’t remember. Only with great effort could he keep himself from taking the remaining two steps and put an end to De Luca’s miserable existence. Yet similar to the personnel on his ward, the man was completely fearless.

“Let me explain what it is that you’re parading around now,” De Luca said. “Quite ingenious, actually.” He paused for a satisfied chuckle. “Well, those handy little devices in you are set off by a number of different triggers: Know that there is a computer monitoring you and the people around you, so when someone tries to meddle with the implants... You get my meaning?”

“Yes,” Khan hissed.

“When one of the persons with the trigger dies or more than one fall unconscious or you destroy the computer or the connection to the mainframe, then it’s over too, I’m afraid. Plus, I know where your crew is.”

Silence. The last casual remark had made every snide retort die on Khan’s lips. “That was it?” he asked instead.

“No, of course not. But that’s all you need to know. So from now on, you better make sure that everything and everyone around you is dandy, is that clear?” De Luca raised an eyebrow, stultifying Khan’s dark look.

“Why me?” Khan ground out, but instead of giving him an answer, De Luca reached behind his desk and then presented Khan a small gadget.

“Await my instructions.”

Immediately recognizing the technology, Khan grabbed the device. A communicator. Long-range, superior to anything Starfleet had. _My own invention._

“You belong to Marcus’s faction,” Khan seethed, his fist closing around the device. It bored into his skin painfully.

“It took you until now to figure it out?” The admiral inclined his head. “And what you’re holding in your hand should also tell you why we chose you … again. You see, we were truly impressed by most of your work – and by that I’m not only referring to your technical skills. Just the way we motivated you wasn’t quite right, but we changed that, didn’t we?”

De Luca obviously enjoyed the furious look Khan gave him.

“Now tell me, do we have an understanding?” the admiral asked and Khan just nodded. This was how it was supposed to be, it seemed.

 _Each and every human on my way makes sure I invariably end up trapped somehow._ _What a lying, manipulating breed!_  he cursed to himself. His pulse pounding uncomfortably in his temples, Khan barely registered the admiral brushing past him and aiming for the door.

“Welcome back to Starfleet,” he said sardonically before he left the room.

Immediately, the usual security officers swarmed in, guiding Khan to his quarter afterward. De Luca’s goodbye still resonating in his head, Khan stepped over the threshold to his room and saw the dark gray overall lying on the bed.

“Change. We’ll wait outside,” he heard.

The door slid close and automatically Khan dressed in the new clothes, their familiar fabric conjuring up memories that entered a maddening mix with the conversation he just had.

 _Focus,_ Khan commanded inwardly. He left the room and marched in step with the men who led him out of the facility and into a shuttle. After they had embarked on their flight, Khan’s sense of orientation told him that they were heading into space, and for the first time since his imprisonment, he felt something like a spark of hope. Instead of his cell, he would see the stars again, and, despite De Luca’s insistence that there was no possibility to escape, he could at least try to find a way, no matter how long it took.

The shuttle jerked imperceptibly – they had arrived. Khan stood up and followed the men down the gangway. Going by the hustle surrounding them, some important event was imminent, and Khan waited until he passed a tiny window to risk a glimpse outside.

A spacedock, his mind registered, but merely the three numbers he was able to see caught his eye.

 _Seven-O-one,_ he read and instantly his stomach started to churn.

“Welcome back to Starfleet,” Khan muttered before he directed his attention to the floor again.

 

 

End of Part One

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurray to snogandagrope, who makes sure that native speakers don't flee, horror in their eyes, when reading my ESL scribbling :)


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